Which is Ostentatious?

No work today. A quick trip into Stratford to get my hair chopped off, then back home to a lovely tax return just waiting for me.

This is the Bancroft Basin in Stratford, where the Stratford Canal (which runs about 25 miles from Birmingham) meets the River Avon. There is a lock just off left of this picture where the boats can move from the canal to the river and vice versa. "Ostentatious" is heading towards the lock and the river and has come from the Birmingham direction.

The Bancroft was originally an area where people used to come to graze their animals, and later on, in the industrial age, came wharves and warehouses. The last of the warehouses used to store wood, and was still used for that purpose when I was a child. That one is now a pub/restaurant. There used to be a second basin also right in front of what is now the Royal Shakespeare Theatre but that was filled in in the early 1900’s.

The building that you can see is the Theatre, and the tower was added when the renovation work was done a few years ago. There is a viewing platform on the top with fantastic views of the river and town. It’s not very pretty and came in for a lot of criticism when it was first built - people said it was ostentatious. It’s a bit like the “Tour Montparnasse” in Paris. The views from there are the best in Paris – because it’s the only place where you can’t see the Tour Montparnasse!

To the right of the tower and just above a street light you can just see the spire of the Holy Trinity Church, where Shakespeare was buried.

It was lovely and warm there – in fact a little muggy.

I arrived back home at about 3pm and half an hour later we have had the most enormous storm. Outside our house you can hardly see the road apart from the white line down the middle. A waste bin outside the Memorial Hall looks as though it is a desert island.