AS IN THE LONG AGO

I was idly looking through some of the slides I've been scanning and I came across this! I guess it was 1996. Bonfire night was approaching and I had a sudden inspiration for the Guy. I know that many people can no longer remember John Major. Some are too young, some are beginning to lose their marbles, and some never really knew who he was in the first place. Well, folks, this is what a Conservative Prime Minister looks like - and I assure you, it is a very good likeness. You really don't want David Cameron to be Prime Minister, do you?

I've been intending to visit Orford Ness for years. Orford is one of my favourite places on the Suffolk coast. It has a fine castle and a planned Norman town with the original street plan, even though it is now only a village. And from the quay you can take a ferry to the Ness where secret experiments were carried out for years on radar and ballistics and on the atom bomb. Yet for some reason I never managed to visit the Ness until yesterday, when Kate and I took the National Trust ferry and spent the afternoon wandering around what must be one of the eeriest and most beautiful places in Britain. Various buildings dot the shingle banks, many of them having once been put to uses that remain unknown. Others have been restored to provide viewing platforms and information. The strangest place of all was Laboratory Number 1 where research was carried out on the bomb. The walls are coated in green mould and peeling paint and the rusting roof members creak in the wind. Half of t