Due South

I used to love Due South. Mmmmm Mounties....

Still, I digress. What I brought you here to talk about was my weekend on the south coast of Hampshire. OK, so Fareham isn't the most swinging, hip locale on the planet, but I'm not one to turn down a free stay in a hotel with Nick. He's working there for two weeks, training folk in the mystical ways of consumer electronics.

Saturday we ventured out and sampled the delights of Southampton. Well to be fair there are probably greater delights than WestQuay, Town Quay and the Itchen Toll Bridge, but being somewhat unprepared, we made the best of what we could find. We had hoped to spot the QM2, or even the QE2 but they were obviously cruising around sunnier climes.

Of course, one of my favourite bloggers lives in Southampton and, had I bothered to check his journal before I left, I'd have realised that he had returned home from the arms of his beau in San Diego and could probably have met up for a drink or somesuch. An opportunity lost. Still, I saw Harbour Lights, the coolest cinema in the South (according to some) so I'm happy :o)

Sunday we tried Portsmouth. In the rain. The rain and the wind.

I may sound like I'm whinging, but even the seagulls had given up and the crossing to the Isle of Wight was looking distinctly dodgy. Especially by hovercraft, which appeared to be making little headway in the rough weather! We sat eating a very nice sandwich in the cafe attached to the Blue Reef Aquarium, watching as the foul weather kept blasting the doors open and knocking their plastic yukka on it's arse time and again.

It was unfortunate that a lot of the things to see and do were outside. I can imagine both Southampton and Portsmouth are extremely nice in the sunshine. We ended up sheltering in a designer outlet called Gunwharf Quays as a) it was inside and, therefore, less wet and b) didn't cost anything to get in. Tourism is so much more fun when you have lots of money! Nick bought a really cool jacket, though, which I cannot wait to see him wearing on a night out as it's super sexy. Vicarious retail therapy is the way forward.

In all it was a brilliant weekend. It's nice just doing things together. I have found that with the right person, even the mundane can be good fun, and I had plenty of that.

Monuments R Us

I know that the United Kingdom was a wee bit short on cash at the end of the Second World War, having fought hard for a few years before the Americans finally woke up and joined in (funny how times change isn't it?) but I was quite surprised to note that the Naval War Memorial in Plymouth and the Naval War Memorial in Portsmouth are, in fact, the same memorial!

Of course I never checked all the names on it (it being too damn windy to read and dodge wayward seagulls at the same time) but could they have been duplicated too? Is this an early case of 'Buy One, Get One Free'? Or are they just huge tesla coils in disguise? We may never know.