Blade was intrigued by this story, informing us that new – or, at least, revamped – beach huts have just gone on sale in Bournemouth. Apparently the huts were snapped up by a number of Brits who most definitely do like to be by the seaside – and who may have been lured yet closer to the water by the creation of the Northern Hemisphere’s first artificial surf reef in Bournemouth.
A spare £90,000 will get you a 25-year lease for a double hut (or, rather, ‘pod’, as Bournemouth Council prefers them to be known). There may well be a ground rent, too, and you can’t sleep the night in the hut/pod.
Some might say that £90,000 could be better spent, but Savills, the estate agents handling the sale, say that demand for the hut/pods has exceeded all expectations.
Anyone for green shoots, down there in Dorset?
Pictured courtesy of Flickr user simonhenry700: a surfer contemplates the waves in Bournemouth and asks herself, ‘If I had £90,000, would I buy a pod? Or a hut? Which is which and what is what? Or shall I buy a new board and a plane ticket to Hawaii?’
For a certain poet, an unspoiled stretch of seaside was like “the holy hush there is in the land on Christmas morning. The roads fairly empty, the sky almost free of aeroplanes and you begin to hear and see and smell once more”.
But who uttered these lines?
(It’s a Monday, and this is your starter for 10 – and yes, we’re fresh to the metropolis, from a coastal sojourn.)
The following words appeared in a Times article in 2003, about the paper’s recently departed Head of Legal, Alastair Brett. They’ve been doing the rounds in the wake of Brett’s sudden exit last week, though without attribution. Who, we wonder, wrote them? Two suspects present themselves – our own occasional scribe, Alex Wade, and Dominic Carman, son of the late, great George (an old mucker of Brett’s). Or was someone else the author? Whatever: the fact remains that Brett was a fearless, tenacious and excellent newspaper lawyer, a man whose commitment to press freedom coursed through every vein in his body. We don’t know the precise reasons for his departure, but he will be missed.
“[He] is known for his impassioned commitment to press freedom – so impassioned that he has been described as “certifiably insane”. Capable of an intimidatory snarl or two, and prepared to be stubborn, Brett is far from mad. He is erudite, charming (so the ladies say), and not known for sitting on the fence. If his sanity has, tongue firmly in cheek, been questioned, one thing not open to doubt is that Brett epitomises the old school Fleet Street lawyer”.
Pictured: Fleet Street - not the same as it used to be.
A curious observation leaps at us from Roy Greenslade’s piece about whether Conrad Black, shortly to roam the high-class hotels of the world again as a free man, will return to the UK and carry out his threat to sue his biographer, Tom Bower, for libel:
I somehow doubt that he would have the appetite, or the funds, to pursue a libel action, but Black marches to the sound of his own drummer, so he might just do that. Even if he did, my money would still be on Bower winning.
Hang on, Roy – what about suing via a no win, no fee deal? Funds or no funds, a CFA would see Conrad through – though maybe he’ll remember what happened to the last press baron who sued Bower. Anyone for Richard Desmond’s curious dalliance with libel?
Pictured: the kind of place in which Conrad Black may be spotted (if not at the Royal Courts of Justice).
Surfing and the favelas: how they’re connected
All OK for Desmond and Five
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A good decision is based on knowledge and not on numbers.
Πλάτων, Greek philosopher.