Inner Ryde

We made two forays into inner Ryde.

The first foray was to find a proper post box, which might be emptied before they got around to the post box in Brading. We thought that what passes for the Post Office in Ryde would do, mainly a McColl's convenience store.

Somewhere along the way we learned that priority postboxes were all about the plague, more particularly about getting completed test kits back to the testing laboratories. I wonder this morning about whether this service is being wound down. Will it just, more or less imperceptibly, wither on the vine or will there be something more positive?

Then a peek at the substantial church more or less at the top of Union Street, once dedicated to St. Thomas, now firmly shut - but I am sure that we once visited the inside of the place after it had become some kind of community-heritage space, complete with a scattering of interesting young people with fags and cans outside. But today I can find no notice of any such visit and the church seems to have been sold on for some kind of development, although given that they have already tried that, perhaps not along the lines of the Horton Chapel here at Epsom, to be found at reference 1 and noticed from time to time in these pages. Perhaps the people concerned should visit Norwich and see what they have done with some of the large number of surplus churches there. A city which was said to have had a church for every Sunday of the year and a public house for every day?

Maybe the lawn tennis club is in better shape, despite the state of this doorway, complete with fake lawn. Not enough gaps to be able to see whether there were any courts or what their surface was.

Then down the passage off St. Thomas Street to inspect the sea from the western side of the pier. Not clear if anyone much uses the passage, except perhaps the odd dog walker. Looking east towards the pier.

Looking west towards Quarr and Fishbourne.

There are some impressive houses on this side of Ryde, presumably dating from its glory days as a resort and as an escape from Portsmouth, then a hundred or more public houses revolving about ruling the waves.

This one, for example, has its own off-street parking, more or less enclosed by the hedge and front wall (behind the camera), secure entrance and the sea out front. Ferry to Portsmouth just minutes away. The only catch is the public car park to the right - but then, you can't have everything. A car park which might once have been part of the garden of either this house or the larger and grander one to the right. Or was the car park the site of a third house, bombed out during the war and subsequently demolished?

The second foray followed from the first. That is to say the important document we had posted during the first foray was not good enough. I had not crossed quite enough 't's - or perhaps not dotted quite enough 'i's. Or perhaps I had crossed or dotted one too many. In any event all to be done again, in a holiday cottage where we had access to the Internet but no access to a printer. On the other hand we did have a data stick, good for several gigabytes.

So I asked Bing about print shops in Ryde, print shops which might be able to print the offending form off the data stick for me to fill in all over again. Answer a bit vague, directing me to various commercial printers on the outskirts, probably not much interested in trifling walk-in print jobs.

So we decide the try the library. If they couldn't do it, they probably knew of someone who could.

And as luck would have it, we found a free parking spot in Newport Street, not far at all from the library. An interesting street, with one of the items of interest being a souvenir from the days when we bashed enough metal that local builders' merchants like Hurst could peddle their own drain covers. Hurst having now mutated into a rather superior version of Robert Dyas, serving most of the towns on the island.

And another one, this one from Osborne the contractor, of nearby Union Street. Probably no longer extant. But if we were to move to Ryde I could perhaps take up collecting drain covers as an alternative to collecting Wellingtonia, with some evidence of a penchant for same being provided at reference 3. Perhaps I could put myself up as a speaker at one of the conferences noticed at reference 4?

A street containing an unusual mixture of old and new. Flats. Houses. Prayers shops. Workshops. A police station, visible just about in the middle of the snap above.

And somewhere nearby where the owner appeared to take a dim view of paying window taxes. Perhaps he (or she) was aping his betters in London, doing one better in fact, as London tax evaders generally settle for bricking up the odd window round the back.

The shops - and the library - were just around the corner. And the helpful library staff took me in hand and printed off my form for the modest sum of £1.20 or some such. They didn't seem to mind at all that I was a foreigner and all I had to do was produce some identification. Perhaps they thought, as an old person, I wouldn't have a clue about how to use their public access computers and that it would be best simply to do the job for me, rather than bothering to explain. They were probably right: I would have got there in the end but it would have taken me a lot longer than it took them.

Next stop the greengrocer in the High Street where we bought some help yourself cherries at £10 the kilo. I wondered about hygiene, but the cherries were fine and we suffered no ill-effects.

Last stop, on the way back to the car, was visiting an artist's studio which happened to be having an open studio day. Another person of an artistic bent whose parents did not think that art college was the way forward. Instead she studied languages, which meant that she could earn her living as a translator while resting between artistic engagements. So not such a bad outcome. See reference 5. We left with a modest painting, nicely wrapped up in a couple of sheets of serious cardboard. Our first purchase of art for some years.

From there, down to a shady parking spot on the Esplanade, behind the duck pond, where we once celebrated a wedding anniversary in a pedal-powered swan. But we didn't stay long as even as early as 11:30 or so, armed with an umbrella, it was too hot for comfort. Just about managed a substantial, but not very good bacon roll in one of the cafés. To the accompaniment of chatter about the dog of the people sitting at the next table. Casual chatter of a sort which Ryde seems to be good for. Working up to cruise-life?

PS 1: in the course of our stay we got through a fair number of English cherries, mostly pretty good and apart from those mentioned above, all from the large Tesco's between Ryde and Brading. Very few duds. We also learned that the Tesco's translation of the Sainsbury's 'Taste the difference'slogan is 'Quality and taste', with a much smaller version of the badge snapped above being included on the packaging of relevant items.

PS 2: I had just finished this post when I read in the mineral book by Richard Pearl, noticed at reference 6, that 'All this energy has been stored in the rocks for long geological ages and is being released at a rate which is viewed with alarm by thoughtful observers'. This in a book which was written in 1956 and was last revised in 1966. But then, I recall reading a remark about the unhealthy pace of consumption in a book by Aldous Huxley, written in the 1930's.  Another thoughtful observer, even if he took the wrong line in the run-up to second world war - before scuttling off to the the US for the duration. At least he had the excuses for this last that he had terrible eyesight and was not of military age.

PS 3: the Kosovan sausages noticed at reference 6 were, as it happens, consumed in sausage stews while we were on the Isle of Wight. A useful supplement to our diet.

References

Reference 1: https://thehortonepsom.org/.

Reference 2: https://www.royalmail.com/priority-postboxes.

Reference 3: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2021/07/no34-continued-with-drains.html.

Reference 4: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2019/05/boring.html.

Reference 5: https://www.rosemarylawrey.co.uk/.

Reference 6: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2022/07/up-junction.html.