Saturday the 7th of March 11:00am and to celebrate my Wife’s birthday a group of us pile off to go on the Tarka Line Rail Ale Trail.

For the un-initiated this involved getting on and off trains at various middle of no-where train stations and then going into pubs to drink booze.

The Tarka Line trail kicks off in Exeter, so we start proceedings in “The Mill on the Exe”, where I select a decent local ale called Tribute. I decide to record the day with a photo of the gang before everyone is too heavily influenced by ale consumption!

Ross knows the way to the next pub, and isn’t afraid to show us.

Another of Ross’ apparently limitless talents is the ability to form intricate designs in the remnants of the head of his pint. This time, it’s a birdy.

Next up we wander down the road to Exeter St Davids station where we catch the train to our second destination.

Stop one is Eggesford, and the Fox and Hounds for a spot of lunch.

I lead off with a pint of Otter Bitter, and follow up with another Tribute. Mmmmm. Ale.

The food at The Fox and Hounds is very good, and is quite good value for money also. The twelve of us put a decent bit of grub in our bellies in anticipation of further ale consumption, although a few of the girls have switched to wine already. Wimps!

Two hours pass very quickly and it’s back to the station to catch another train. We decide to end our outward journey here as we’ve got limited time and have pre-selected a couple of pubs that we don’t want to miss. So it’s on a train to head back towards Exeter.

Next stop, Morchard Road.

Now it’s time for another group photo. Ross shows off his shy side in this one.

Disaster! We find that Morchard Road serves a small collection of buildings which constitutes a couple of houses, a garage that is closed and our target pub, the Devonshire Dumpling. Which is also closed… Worse still, it’s an hour and a half until the next train is due…

A rapid phone call to the pub convinces them to open up just for us and we all pile in. The staff tell us that they are more an eating pub than a drinking pub, and that they don’t open during the afternoon. As this is slightly at odds with the Tarka Line information leaflet, we politely point out they might want to update their entry.

More ale consumption follows.

After our alloted hour and thirty minutes we stumble back to the station to wait for a train.

No.

The next stop is Yeoford station.

Immediately next to the station is a building, we glance through the window and see a guy behind a bar (complete with optics) cleaning glasses. So we can be forgiven for trying to get in, only for the chap to tell us it’s his house, and not a pub! Oops.

Luckily the next pub is only over the bridge, it’s The Mare and Foal.

I’ll confess that the service in The Mare and Foal wasn’t as good as the other pubs we’d visited. It is a lovely pub and does serve some good beer, but we’d come to expect high standards during the day and for me the Mare and Foal didn’t meet those standards.

We did get to have a good few games of pool though.

By now it’s dark out and we’ve got to head back to Exeter for our final stop. The train rolls into the station and we all tumble aboard.

Our final stop is the Great Western Hotel just next to Exeter St. Davids station. We sink another pint and our day on the trail of ale draws to a close.

The verdict – highly recommended, an excellent way to pass an afternoon. I would actually say that it’s better to spend two or more days doing this, and take in more of the stops and pubs available to you. Limited to one afternoon we only managed five of the pubs and it would have been great to fit a few more in!

So I’m going through the rubbish bins outside some bloke’s house in hollywood and I find a wad of paper, I’m not a stalker or anything you know, just happened to be going through some bins, nothing wrong with that.

Anyway, I found this script so I scanned it in cos I reckon it sounds dead exciting. I don’t get what all the crossing out stuff is about but anyway, here you go.

Opening up and we see a mysterious storyline as a man and woman investigate paranormal goings on together and there are all sorts of conspiracies as governments big businesses do lots of dodgy things.

How does JJ Abrams come up with these amazing ideas? Read the script, it will blow your tiny little mind.

I think this show would be amazing and even better would be if you took the exact same music soundtrack from an episode of Lost and put it over the top of this for added mystery and menace, ooooh how amazing does that sound?

Haaaaaa this is of course a joke because I’m pretty sure JJ Abrams didn’t just steal an old X-Files script and change the names from Mulder and Scully to Peter and Anna. I just thought that I’d follow on from my review of the film crash (which is the best thing ever written by anyone ever) with another review of the new TV show The X-Files Fringe. The bit about the Lost music is clearly true though, and it has got Pacey from Dawson’s creek in it being all grown up.

For my birthday way back in 2006, my buddy Tuan bought us tickets to see a stage adaptation of Philip Pullman’s "His Dark Materials" trilogy. Although purchased in October 2006 the play wasn’t actually on until April 2008 – last Saturday in fact.

The play is in two parts, first was at 14:00 and the second at 19:00 with a couple of hours break in between (or pub and pints time as I named it). Total running time is somewhere near to five hours, which is fairly extreme but understandable given the length of the three books.

We set off down the motorway towards the West End of London bright and early on Saturday. When we hit Reading after about 100 miles of driving, I get Tuan to check what Theatre in the West End we are heading for. He replies;

“Theatre Royal, Bath.”

Oops.

At the next junction we turn around and head the 80 odd miles back to Bath, tails between our legs but thankful we didn’t make it all the way to London.

The performance itself was I believe an amateur group, and was made up entirely of children and young adults, with the oldest cast member something like 21 years old.

Overall the performance was engaging, and highly professional. One issue for me was that some of the younger actors appeared to think that the quality of their acting acting was directly linked to how loud they said their lines. As such some of the players delivered every line at what seemed to be full volume, and maximum attack. This coupled with some slight over amplification of the voices resulted in me occasionally flinching in expectation of hearing damage.

If you haven’t read the books the following will mean nothing to you.

It’s difficult to really buy into a young man of approximately twenty years playing the part of Lord Azrael, but once you look past that (and the other ludicrously young cast members) it’s not so bad.

I wondered how they would represent the characters of the daemons – the answer is with someone wearing silk pyjamas and a mask. I struggled with this throughout if I’m quite honest, as I did with the sets which were effectively non-existant. But I’m being unfair – it’s a huge undertaking, and the overall result is commendable. With the sheer quantity of storytelling that takes place, set design was always going to be difficult, as was getting across the daemons in all their complexity.

Why do a lot of photographers think anyone will be interested in a photograph of flowers? It’s a flower, what’s the big deal? I find these things interminably boring myself.

Ha! IN YOUR FACE!

See how I confound expectations by saying I don’t like pictures of flowers, then post a picture, of flowers!

It’s like that film Crash where that actor Matt Dillon plays a caring son of an invalid father, and we like him. But then, oh no! It turns out he is a horrible racist, we definately don’t like him. Then worse – he sexually assaults a woman – we hate him! Then suddenly, BAM! The storytelling confounds expectation, as Matt Dillon’s character risks his life and helps the very same woman he assualted when she is involved in a car crash, so how can he be a bad person, we should like him again surely?

No, because he’s a racist, and a disgusting pervert. I’ll shut up now.  Still at least we are treated like total morons by the writer and director.  To think they won an Oscar too,  reedickularse.

After my foray into critiquing films that have been out for ages and no-one really cars about, I’m back on safer ground posting photos. This was taken with a 50mm lens reversed onto the camera body with a reversing ring, focused manually at f/22 and shot with flash.

ooooh.