Fire!

OK, I admit, its hardly a scene from the film Back Draft but it was a bit of excitement, and I had my camera with me! No, its not one of those shops on fire. It was the bin! I was in a shop on the High Street and this panic stricken man came running in, wanting to know the name of the street so that he could phone the Fire Brigade. As I left the store, expecting to see the towering inferno, I was greeted by the sight of a few wisps of smoke coming out the waste bin. I guess that someone had dropped a cigarette in it. I hung around waiting for the Fire Brigade to arrive, camera in hand. I'm sure people thought I was some kind of arsonist, waiting to see the result of my crime. It wasn't me Gov'! Honest!

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Chim-Chimney

All these chimney pots sit on the roofs of the old back-to-back houses that are on one side of the Portland Street car park. The large car park used to have these sort of houses all over it but they were all demolished in the late 60's. One house escaped the compulsory purchase order (giving the right to developers to buy land, and whatever is on it, and then being able to knock it down) and stood alone in the vast sea of tarmac, until it was eventually demolished in 1980. A public toilet now stands on the site of the former number 14.

I don't imagine that many of the houses with these chimneys have open fires now-a-days, but in the past the smoke must have been billowing. Was that the start of global warming? Its all Mary Poppins' fault!