Four more things I saw on the road to/from Iskandarkul

A homemade water wheel with plastic buckets, alternately red and light bue
A blacksmith's gates adorned with wrought iron images of an anvil, hammer and other tools
We had to stop for a car-wash as you get fined for having a dirty car in the centre of town
Donkeys laden with colourful bundles

(I've not finished with my Tajik/Kazakh trip and I have another looming, so I'd better just get these bits out there, in no particular order ...)

What it's all about.

Liverpool schoolchildren who are taking part in an innovative music education project have become the youngest performers at this year's BBC Proms.

Pupils as young as nine from Faith Primary School played alongside members of the Liverpool Philharmonic at the Royal Albert Hall in London on Sunday.
The school is one of six in England taking part in the In Harmony scheme.
All pupils and staff learn instruments, in a programme inspired by Venezuela's pioneering Sistema project.

 See more here.

Monarch of the Garden

Landscape Art

Machrie Beach. Isle of Arran. 28 August 2013.

Thames Barrier

This is one of the wonders of the world - I think it's an astonishing piece of engineering. Originally expected to be used only a few times a year at neap and spring tides it now protects the city dozens of times a year.
I thoroughly recommend the Thames River Cruise to the Barrier.

Thames sail barge

As well as seeing the annual Thames Barge Race on our recent trip to London we saw this beautiful sail barge as we sat and ate a "proper hamburger " at Greenwich.

London is an amazing city

London is a wonderful place to visit. We've been very much enjoying being tourists and catching up on how London has changed since we lived here.
Map apps in smartphones have made bus travel, so much more interesting and fun than the Tube, easy and accessible. It's great to see all the different faces of the city from the top of a bus.
Scenic highlight of the weekend for me was the cruise from Westminster Dock to the Thames Barrier and back to Greenwich.
On our way downriver we saw the start of the annual Thames Barge Race . Nowadays it takes four men and a steersman to do what one man used to do.  Row a barge upriver from Greenwich to Westminster Pier without bumping into a single bridge. If you do, you have to start again.

Compare the modern orange tug in the second photo down with the lovely old lady in the third picture. 

Taking a break

Loretta, aka Sousie, taking a break between numbers.

Church

I love the handsome plainness of the Church of Scotland interiors on Arran, each with a touch of decoration that is equally homely.  These carvings at Shiskine are almost shocking with their sinuous vitality and pagan references, however. What a treat!

11.10pm. Arran. Looking north tonight.

Tourist Interlude

I had a day for R & R so l went on a jaunt to Lake Iskandarkul.  It's about a three and a half hour drive each way, so not your usual day trip from Dushanbe but I wanted to make the most of my free day.
The lake was wonderful and well worth the trip.

Breakfast

The breakfasts at the excellent guest house were ... well ... excellent!

More Tajik suppers

Here are a few more photos of the suppers I bought myself while I was in Dushanbe.
Tuesday's supper:

 Here is USD 4.50 of supper. More Borjomi (you can buy it in Britain, but it's hellish expensive), some pistachio nuts, a very garlicky beetroot salad, bread. The bread was much cheaper than yesterday's (about half the price at a dollar thirty cents), but fresher and nicer with it. I still have some kuraga left over from yesterday, too.
I find it too hot here to want lunch; the management provide two 1.5 litre bottles of water which you can see in the background there and which I swill at leisure.

Wednesday's supper:

As well as the, by now, familiar Borjomi mineral water and round, flat bread, today we see red caviare in a jar (twist off top, no bottle opener required) sat atop the bread. The box rear left contains highest quality raisins (three times as expensive as 1st class raisins, I'll have you know), and the box in front ... well ...
I vaguely recognised one word on the box - Конопляная - and when I read on the end of the box that these seeds in no way contain any THC and so are not classified as a prohibited substances I knew that I just had to buy this. Hemp seed snacks (also contains walnuts, sunflower seeds, starch, salt, saffron), to go with beer! Didn't buy any beer (I'm quite enjoying not having booze for a while). The seedy snacks are a little dusty tasting, but OK.
This little lot set me back the princely sum of USD24. Most expensive item was the caviare at $13, then the raisins at $6.

I know, I know .... you want to know what such precious raisins look like!
Here they are, some of these babies are over an inch long!

And the seeds, well, they're seeds, stuck together, just about, in squares (with the starch (presumably).).

  The only thing that was different on Thursday's supper menu (Borjomi, Olivier salad, raisins and black bread) was a fabulous crusty black bread roll. The texture was wonderfully dense and chewy, almost treacly, and it was fragrant with caraway seeds. Wonderful! All gone!!

Food from afar

I recently spent a week in Dushanbe, staying at a very comfortable guest house. In the evenings I went to the local supermarket and bought my supper.

This is USD6 of supper - I largely picked things which I remember fondly from my days in Rostov on Don in the 1990s.
The box in the foreground contains what we in Blighty call Russian salad. The Russians and post-Soviet nations to which it spread call it Olivier ... because it was reputedly invented by the French chef of some Muscovite aristo. Chopped cooked veg and sausage in mayo.
The other box further back on the left contains kuraga - dried apricots, but what a taste, and of what size!
The bottle is half-a-litre of Borjomi - Georgian mineral water. To say that this was a "product" which was "marketed" throughout the Soviet Union would be misleading, but it was certainly sold everywhere in the old SU and they were rightly proud of it. The packaging has had a makeover, but the water itself, with a slight sparkle and a hint of salty mineralishness is just as good as I remembered.
The bread is a little chewy, it may be that this particular loaf is more for show than consumption.

Top side of the bread studded with seeds, nut, berries ...

The swirly underside of the bread

A kuraga

Those green knobbly bits the cat leaves on the floor

aren't so knobbly when you stand on them.

I just love these pink and baby - blue evenings!

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There are some people who are interested in my travels. This blog is for them. And sometimes my mind wanders on its own. This blog is for that. Posts will be occasional and irregular, in every sense.
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