Have You Ever Been to Seahenge? or a Tenuous Homage to Spinal Tap

In Boston Square, Hunstanton, Norfolk, is a sensory park commissioned by Norfolk County Council and designed by Jeremey Stacey Architects. In the park is what looks like a homage to Seahenge which is a prehistoric structure that was found off the coast of Holme-next-the-Sea: a timber circle from the Bronze Age. It was discovered in 1998 and now resides in Lynn Museum. Here is a video I took in the sensory park, and it is my homage to the Stonehenge scene in This is Spinal Tap (1984), directed by Rob Reiner:

Boston Square Sensory Park

Below is the script from This is Spinal Tap, where it refers to Stonehenge (one of the funniest scenes in the film), including a link to the relevant section in the film:

Ian: Are you telling me that this is it? This is scenery? Have you ever been to Stonehenge?
Artist: No, I haven't been to Stonehenge.
Ian: The triptychs are...the triptychs are twenty feet high. You can stand four men up them!
Artist: Ian, I was...I was...I was supposed to build it eighteen inches high.
Ian: This is insane. This isn't a piece of scenery.
Artist: Look, look. Look, this is what I was asked to build. Eighteen inches. Right here, it specified eighteen inches. I was given this napkin, I mean...
Ian: Forget this! Fuck the napkin!!!

SPINAL TAP performs Stonehenge
(click here for film clip This is Spinal Tap )

HOTEL room after gig

David: I do not, for one, think that the problem was that the band was down. I think that the problem may have been...that there was a Stonehenge monument on the stage that was in danger of being crushed by a dwarf...

Related Links
Seahenge
Stonehenge
This is Spinal Tap

Leeds Girls' High School - 'Development Opportunity'

A sign has finally gone up for the sale of the Elinor Lupton Centre building of the old Leeds Girls' High School in Headingley Lane. I spotted in when walking back from university so decided to have a wander around the building and take some snaps.

As you can see it is made in the same Portland Stone as the University of Leeds, popular for construction in this area in the 1920s and 1930s. It is a jurassic limestone and, interestingly, has tiny fossils in it if you looked closely.

According to this person who posted a photo on flickr, it is a grade 2 listed building and was purchased by the school in 1986 for £230,000:
Elinor Lupton Centre



I love this building and pass it every day on the way to and from university. I remember when I first came to Leeds (2005) it was still in use and drama performances were advertised on the board outside, in the same place as the 'for sale' board now appears. It would be lovely to see the building cared for again: some sand-blasting and graffiti removal.

The building is much bigger than it looks in my image. The Geograph link below shows a good image of the building and reflects its size much better.

There was a locked fence at the back and I managed to take this photo of this old sign through the railings:



Also, this detail I photogrpahed demonstrates the Greco-Roman influence in Art-Deco architecture of this period.



Related Links:

Leeds High School on Wikipedia
Elinor Lupton Centre on Geograph

Walking to the Beach

Video: Walking to the Beach

Walking affirms, suspects, tries out, transgresses respects, etc., the trajectories it "speaks". All the modalities sing a part in this chorus, changing from step to step, stepping in through proportions, sequences, and intensities which vary according to the time, the path taken and the weather. These enunciatory operations are of an unlimited diversity. They therefore cannot be reduced to their graphic trail. (De Certeau 2006: 99)

Reading the Arcades/Reading the Promenades
This mini-blog is part of the above project. All my seaside schizocartography posts are available here:
Reading the Arcades/Reading the Promenades
Or click here to link to my previous blog on the Norfolk seaside resort of Hunstanton: The Seaside in Winter

Bibliography
De Certeau, Michel. 2006. 'Walking in the City', The Practice of Everyday Life, trans. by Steven Rendall (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press) pp. 91-110