Where the Heck is this?

It seems the earlier 'Where the Heck' was all too easy for some people...so try this one.

Where the Heck is this?

OK, so you think you're pretty smart. This is an easy game when you've been there but...here's a more difficult one...you haven't sat outside a pub just here. And it isn't Costa Rica.

Stranger than People: Spider

I was just puzzling over which image from the legendary Stranger than People annual to upload when I saw an article over on the BBC website about spiders that breathe underwater using bubbles. http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/13614742 - google or cut and paste into your browser or whatever...

So here is The Yellow Monster of Sundra Strait - a fictional tale from Ted Hallam in the Stranger than People annual. Take it easy...

Where the Heck - Answer

First of all, well done to all the Nottinghamites, Ex-Nottinghamites and East Midlanders who correctly identified the 'structure' as being in Nottingham. Er, well done for not having amnesia. Loyal follower Jenny Hardy was probably closest with suggesting that it is a melting house...it is indeed a house formed out of the natural sandstone of Castle Rock. The gate in the picture is actually the exit of the Mortimer's Hole cave tour at Nottingham Castle and the eagle-eyed will have spotted a poster of Jonas Armstrong as Robin Hood. They tell you if you go on the tour that the unusual central heating was in the form of sheep kept on the lower floor...the rising heat from their bodies warmed the house (!). So a complimentary ride on the Loch Ness Monster for Jenny and a souvenir lump of finest Sherwood sandstone to everyone else.

I went on the Mortimer's Hole tour in probably about 1977 and again after many years living in London a couple or so years ago...I had a nasty case of (sot of) deja vu right at the end of the tour when I realised I could remember almost word for word what the guide was saying from having been on the 1977 tour and that happened just as we exited the sandstone 'house.'

In other Nottingham related news - I think it's great that Wollaton Hall in Nottingham will Wayne Manor in the new Batman movie. Batman finally comes home to his spiritual home county. Look out for a Wollaton Hall themed post soon and another game of "Where the Heck" - Peace my people and best wishes to all my Costa Rican readers. Loving your coffee, by the way!

What the heck is it?

Okay, let's get interactive and have a quiz. Where was this picture taken? What is in the picture? What might you have found inside it at one point? There is a clue in the picture that will make it slightly easier...and the further away you are from my location the more impressed I will be if you know the answer. No, it's not from the new Planet of the Apes movie.

Stranger than People: Ants!

It's pretty disappointing, isn't it? That there isn't a race of super-intelligent ants in charge of Mars. It was a regular feature of my childhood that there should be insects on Mars; from Quatermass and the Pit to a Dennis Wheatley story the name of which momentarily escapes me. Mars and insects go together like 'bee' and 'hive.' I dimly recall a 'reluctant reader' type boys book in my classroom when I was about 8 of a mission to Mars that encountered giant ants that was very similar to this illustration from the legendary Stranger than People annual. It ended with the following sentence (if I recall correctly) - "By the time you are a grown up Man will almost certaily have landed on Mars and we will know if it is capable of supporting life..." Yup, all very disappointing. One of my aims in life is to live sufficiently long to be interviewed as one of the last remaining people who recall watching an Apollo landing...I hoping this will be when I'm in a care home watching a Mars landing on the communal TV.

Anyways, super-intelligent ants are in charge of my dining room...well, they live underneath it and last month they built a beach under my radiator by carrying sand out from under the house grain by grain. I feel guilty about the ant poison. It sure is making them work slowly. Sigh. But if I don't do it; come swarming time, there'll thousands of the little devils running and flying around my house.

Stranger than People: Jungle Book

And here from the Stranger than People annual is the illustration of Jungle Book's Mowgli used in the section on children raised by animals. Although, I, of course, saw Disney's Jungle Book as a child at the cinema but I recall an afternoon with inclement weather...the horse racing was rained off and the announcer on my local ITV station stated that there would now be a clip from Jungle Book...well, this was in the days when they just didn't show that much Disney on television - there were Bank Holiday specials...there was "The Wonderful World of Disney" on BBC - which often seemed to be nature type footage - but whole Disney movies were seldom, if ever, shown. So a clip of Jungle Book already had my attention; but this was the clip that wouldn't quit...plainly they didn't start at the beginning of the movie, but 40 odd minutes later the clip was still going strong. I'm conscious too that in the days before VHS kids watched TV in a completely different way. With no way to play something again you really had to pay attention. You might not see it again for months or even years in the case of a film.