The Far Pavilion

It’s nice that weddings are for the young at heart as well as the young.
Last week the neighbours who have lived two houses away from us for the past twenty-odd years tied the knot. (Their semi is almost exactly the same as ours, given that the two pairs of houses were built by the same builder in 1911, but that’s another story.)
The ceremony took place at the Ladies Pavilion in Central Park, the witnesses were their two grown-up children and, according to the groom, ‘the rest of the congregation comprised a variety of ducks and some basking turtles.’
Afterwards they all (bar the wildlife) went for lunch in the Union Square Café and then spent the evening at the Blue Note Jazz Club listening to the Dizzy Gillespie All Stars.
It sounds wonderful – and so much classier than tying the knot in Las Vegas.
The Ladies Pavilion looks very romantic but has had a rather chequered history.
It was originally a shelter for people waiting for the trolley at 8th Avenue and 59th Street and was moved from its original location to Hernshead around 1912, probably to clear the way for the construction of the Maine Monument.
By the late 1960s – perhaps around the time our happy couple met – the pavilion had fallen into a state of severe disrepair. In 1971 vandals knocked down what was left of it and the bits that could be salvaged were kept in storage until funds were found for reconstruction. The opening ceremony took place on October 30, 1973.

Candid camera

On rainy days I cheer myself up by checking out the weather on two beaches near our place in Catalonia. If it's sunny - even at this time of year - there will be people sunbathing or paddling in the sea. Just as there are today.

I bet most of them have no idea that they can be seen by anyone who logs on to http://www.tamariu.eu/webcam.php.


I expect I will visit one or both of the beaches when I'm out in Spain next week and, as usual, I won't be able to resist the temptation to wave in the general direction of where the webcams must be.

It's a jungle out there

A whole month has flown by since the last post. Partly because I’ve been busy, busy, busy – but also because I was feeling ever so slightly inhibited.
My own fault, of course. I tend to assume no-one reads what I write – not on this blog, anyway. But it seems they do.
So … I’ve been to a wedding, but I am not going to post anything about it other than to say it all went wonderfully well and that mother of the bride (and her husband) deserve a pat on the back for a job well done.
I don’t think any more invitations are in the offing - not because people think I might blog about their impending nuptials but because no one I know, young or old, appears likely to take the plunge into matrimony in the near future.
My diary isn’t completely empty, however. I’m going to a speed-hacking evening (a cross between speed-dating and journalism training). A firm I freelance for occasionally is having a birthday party at Ronnie Scott’s. There’s the press club ball with the dinosaurs (real ones, not just old journos) and a girlie trip to Spain with one of my best mates in the hope of catching some sunshine before we batten down the hatches for winter.