Tourism

The Wizard of Oz makes a Christmas appearance at Castle Howard

Posted on by Platypus Man

It’s that time of year again, when stately homes up and down the land get dressed up in Christmas finery, and members of the public pay handsomely for the privilege of seeing what they’ve been up to. Some take a general, untargeted approach, and assume that a few brightly decorated trees and random reindeer, wise men and shepherds will be sufficient to get their visitors into the Christmas spirit.

Others take it a lot more seriously, spending a small fortune on themed light and sound installations that seem to have more to do with extravagant showmanship than with the spiritual origins of the festival. This year Castle Howard, a grand mansion in Yorkshire, has gone for it big time, playing host to no less than the Wizard of Oz over the festive period.

OK, it’s time for a confession: the Wizard of Oz is a total mystery to me. I’ve never read the book, nor have I seen the movies. The only Yellow Brick Road I’m familiar with is the one Elton John sings about, and neither tin men nor cowardly lions have ever crossed my path. But hey, it’s never too late to learn!

Dorothy’s House after the tornado

The tour began with a visit to Dorothy’s house after it has been trashed by the tornado. It looked surprisingly convincing, and puts me in mind of some of the near derelict buildings Mrs P and I occasionally encountered on road trips around remote corners of the US. Happy days!

Along the Yellow Brick Road to the Emerald City, lined with giant hand-made poppies.

And then we stepped out onto the yellow brick road, making our way to the Emerald City by way of a corridor that had been magnificently transformed by the Castle Howard team, who worked long and hard to create 64 giant handmade poppies and various other floral decorations. The coloured lighting added an extra dimension, and made the whole thing eerily attractive.

Christmas tree in the Great Hall, a.k.a. the Emerald City

Soon we were in the Great Hall, dominated by a Christmas tree that is 28 feet (8.5 metres) high, a tree that had been dressed with 3,000 decorative baubles as well as 1km string of twinkling lights. It took the dedicated team three days of hard work to decorate the tree, but it was clearly worth the effort. Most visitors took a selfie in front of it, so it is amazing that Mrs P managed to take her photo without a single person in view. She has the patience of a saint, does Mrs P, though it doesn’t stop her grumbling about people standing between her camera and her proposed subject!

A performance artist puts on a show in the Emerald City’s high street.

In an area of the castle that had been converted into the Emerald City’s High Street an exuberant performance artist engaged joyfully with visitors young and old, as well as performing some gymnastic exercises that made my eyes water. My body was never, ever even half that supple! I don’t know if this lady was portraying a character from the original Wizard of Oz, but in my book she was a superstar. Move over, Judy Garland!

The Cowardly Lion

And then, as we progressed through the rest of the castle, we met some other characters who were most definitely part of the original tale. The cowardly lion looked nervous, as might be expected given the huge numbers of visitors wandering past his bed, and the scarecrow seemed baffled by what was going on all around him. The tin man, however, seemed unconcerned by the suffering of his two colleagues; in fact he came across as totally heartless!

The Scarecrow

There was plenty more to enjoy as we explored Castle Howard’s take on the Wizard of Oz, including various spectacular sound and video creations. Overall, the installation proved to be a wonderful piece of escapist nonsense. On doing some research after our visit I’ve learned that some scholars believe the Wizard of Oz to be a work of great depth that contains within it important messages about life, the universe and everything. My gut feeling is that they’re overthinking it: surely Frank L Baum’s wacky story, originally written in 1900, is meant to entertain, and from what I saw during our visit it does just that. However I would add that, while I have absolutely no idea what Mr Baum was drinking when he wrote his novel, I would be delighted to get hold of a bottle (or two!).

Gloomy London, viewed from the River Thames

Posted on by Platypus Man

Our recent trip to London to watch a sumo tournament also gave us the opportunity to act like regular tourists for a while, ticking off a few things that have been on Mrs P’s list for many years. One of these was to take a boat trip along the River Thames, downriver from Westminster and through the Thames Barrier. Although I’m a Londoner by birth, I don’t usually enjoy the experience of re-visiting a city that I find crazily crowded and annoyingly noisy. Travelling through it by boat, however, offered the opportunity of a different perspective, more scenic and less frenetic, so although on our chosen day the weather was relentlessly gloomy I was keen to give it a try.

The Houses of Parliament, including Big Ben (aka Elizabeth Tower) as viewed from the Thames. In front of it are several boats that take tourists on trips along the Thames.

Boarding our Thames Clipper boat at Westminster, we were immediately able to admire the Palace of Westminster (aka the Houses of Parliament), including its unmistakeable clock tower. More properly known as the Elizabeth Tower, the clock tower is popularly referred to as Big Ben (in fact, Big Ben is the great bell housed within the tower, rather than the tower itself). These iconic symbols of British democracy date from the mid-19th century, when they replaced earlier buildings that were destroyed by fire in 1834.

The London Eye, and to its right County Hall, which once was the home of London’s local government. Today it houses various attractions, venues, and hotels.

Opposite the Houses of Parliament, on the south bank of the Thames, is the more frivolous but no less recognisable London Eye. Originally known as the Millennium Wheel, the London Eye was opened by Prime Minister Tony Blair on 31 December 1999. It was originally conceived as a temporary project that was due to remain standing for just five years, but it proved so popular that it was soon given permanent status. The Eye is the world’s tallest cantilevered observation wheel, and the UK’s most popular tourist attraction with over 3 million paying visitors per year.

Tower Bridge. To the left is the Shard, and to the right of the bridge is the Walkie-Talkie Building, aka 20 Fenchurch Street.

Heading downriver it was not long before our boat reached another of London’s “must-see” tourist destinations, Tower Bridge. Built in the neo-Gothic style and constructed between 1886 and 1894, the central sections of the road bridge lift to allow tall ships to pass though safely.

The Shard, and on the river in front of it the museum ship HMS Belfast. This cruiser was commissioned in August 1939. In June 1944 she took part in Operation Overlord, supporting the Normandy landings.

Other buildings visible from this section of the river showcase modern architecture, demonstrating that for all its historic attractions London is not stuck in the past. Located on the south bank of the Thames and standing just over 1,000 feet (309.6m) high, the pyramid-shaped Shard is a 72-storey mixed-use development built between 2009 and 2012. This iconic landmark is the tallest building in Western Europe, and the 7th tallest in Europe as a whole behind one in Poland and five more in Russia.

The Walkie-Talkie Building

On the opposite side of the river, the Walkie-Talkie building is equally recognisable, although it comes up short when compared with the Shard as it stands a mere 528 feet (160m) tall! More properly known as 20 Fenchurch Street, the Walkie Talkie’s highly distinctive top-heavy form appears to burst upward and outward. There are 34 storeys of office space, above which can be found a further 3 floors of bars and restaurants.

Metropolitan Wharf, Wapping

Londinium was founded by Roman invaders around AD 47-50. The site was selected because it would make an ideal port and commercial hub, being narrow and shallow enough to put a bridge across, and yet deep enough to welcome seagoing ships. The Thames remained key to the growth and development of the city long after the departure of the Romans, with the wharves and docks that lined its banks handling ever-growing volumes of imports and exports. Countless wharves still remain, although most have been converted to residential or office use.

The piers of the Thames Barrier straddle the Thames

As we neared the end of our boat trip downriver we passed through the Thames Barrier, which is one of the world’s largest movable flood defence barriers. Spanning 520 metres across the Thames, its purpose is to protect central London from flooding caused by tidal surges in the North Sea.  It is made up of 10 massive steel gates; the four main gates are 61 metres wide and, when raised, stand as high as a five-storey building. In normal conditions, only the piers that support the gates and the hydraulic mechanism are visible. The gates lie flat on the riverbed, allowing river traffic to pass freely. When a high tide and potential storm surge are forecast the hydraulic machinery is used to rotate the gates upward, forming a solid steel wall against the water.

Difficult to believe that massive steel plates lie on the river bed between these piers, steel plates that may one day save London from a catastrophic flood

The Thames Barrier was just one of several London landmarks that we were pleased to see during our boat trip. A boat trip along the Thames most definitely offers a new outlook on the UK’s capital. Maybe I’ll do it again one day, but hopefully when the sun is shining!

Wordless Wednesday: Covered Bridge

Posted on by Platypus Man

Wordless Wednesday is a simple blog post featuring a photo. It seeks to convey a message or tell a story, but speaks for itself without using words. Mrs P took this photo of the Taftsville covered bridge in Vermont, USA, in 2007. Built in 1836, it is one of the oldest covered bridges in Vermont.

Wordless Wednesday – Lonesome Tree

Posted on by Platypus Man

Wordless Wednesday is a simple blog post featuring a photo. It seeks to convey a message or tell a story, but speaks for itself without using words. Mrs P took this photo of a lonesome willow tree, located at the southern end of Lake Wānaka in the Otago region of New Zealand, in 2019.

Here comes the sun – Helios and Diwali at Kedleston Hall

Posted on by Platypus Man

Last week we took a short trip to get up close and personal with the sun. Well not THE sun, obviously, but rather an art installation at nearby Kedleston Hall that portrays the surface of the sun in breathtaking detail, complete with sunspots and swirling solar winds. Helios is the work of artist Luke Jerram*, who based his creation on thousands of images of the sun collected by NASA and other astronomical organisations.

It’s easy to understand why Jerram was inspired to create Helios, which is named after the ancient Greek god of the sun. Did you know that our sun is 4.5 billion years old, and has about the same amount of time left until it runs out of gas? And it’s very, very hot! The surface of the sun is around 5,500°C, while its core has a mind boggling temperature of 15 million°C. Our sun has a diameter of 1.4 million kilometres (855,000 miles), but is just around average in size – some other stars are up to 100 times bigger. Wow!

Jerram’s brightly illuminated piece is 7 metres in diameter, and totally dominated the grand – 19 metres high – saloon hall in which it was suspended. The scale is mind-blowing, with one centimetre of the sculpture representing 2,000 kilometres of the real sun’s surface. Clearly, our sun is one really big dude. As if to make the point, displayed in an adjacent room and made to the same scale was a tiny model of the Earth. It really put us in our place; this planet, which to us seems impossibly huge, is a mere pimple when viewed from a cosmic perspective.

However, not everyone seemed convinced. Two other visitors, nerdy types – men, of course – were a bit agitated. They complained that although the representations of the Earth and the sun may have been made to the same scale, the distance between them had been miscalculated. According to their calculations, the model of the Earth should rightly have been positioned outside in the carpark, or maybe even half-way to the nearby city of Derby. I could barely stifle my yawns – why couldn’t they just appreciate Luke Jerram’s creativity, rather than droning on tediously about impenetrable mathematics? Life’s too short, guys!

Diwali Celebrations

Coinciding with the Helios exhibition at Kedleston Hall** was a celebration of Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights. This, I’m sure, was no coincidence. Diwali celebrates the victory of light over darkness, so programming an art installation with the sun at its very heart to run alongside a Diwali celebration was a stroke of genius.

This photo features Diwali decorations on the floor of the grand Marble Hall. Through the open door to the rear you can glimpse the lower part of Helios, suspended in the Saloon Hall.

This was the third consecutive year in which Kedleston has celebrated Diwali. Many Derby residents share a cultural heritage derived from the Indian sub-continent, and Diwali celebrations are therefore big in the city. Extending those celebrations a few miles north seems entirely appropriate, particularly in view of Kedleston’s historical links with India. Those links date back over a century to one of the stately home’s former owners – George Nathaniel Curzon, a.k.a. Lord Curzon (1859–1925) – who served as Viceroy of India between 1899 and 1905. Kedleston still displays many artefacts and artworks that Curzon brought back from his travels.

The Diwali celebrations introduced an unexpected splash of colour to Kedleston. At their heart were displays of hundreds of hand-crafted marigolds, which decorated several of the rooms. In Indian culture marigolds are used extensively in religious festivals, weddings and other ceremonies to symbolise purity, positivity and the divine, and they certainly brought a hint of the exotic to this traditionally English stately home. Other Diwali elements on display included clay oil lamps to light the way, and rangoli light projections.

Although fairly modest, Kedleston’s Diwali celebrations were good to see, and served as a potent reminder of the diverse population living within just a few miles of this grand building. I wonder what the old Viceroy would have made of them?

Remembering George Harrison

As we drove away from Kedleston Hall, having spent the afternoon in the company of the sun, and being inspired by the hope that is implicit in the Diwali festival, I found myself quietly singing a masterpiece by the late, sadly lamented George Harrison.

All four of the Beatles briefly embraced Indian culture following visits to that country in 1966 and 1968, but only George Harrison really got it. Much of George’s subsequent work was inspired directly or indirectly by Indian culture and religion, including I believe the wonderful “Here Comes the Sun” which appeared on the Beatles’ Abbey Road album in 1969. If you don’t know the song, or even if you do and would like to wallow in it one more time, listen to it here courtesy of YouTube.

* Postscript: Another work by Luke Jerram

A couple of years ago another work by Luke Jerram was exhibited at Derby Cathedral. On that occasion his chosen subject was the moon, suspended impressively above the nave. Clearly, he is fascinated by all things astronomical.

** Postscript: More on Kedleston Hall

My home county of Derbyshire is blessed with many grand stately homes. Kedleston is one of my favourites, and I have blogged about it before. You can read more about Kedleston Hall, and enjoy more of Mrs P’s photos, here and here.

Culture shock! Grand Sumo comes to London

Posted on by Platypus Man

A couple of weeks ago Mrs P and I took ourselves off to London for a few days to attend a sumo tournament. Almost without exception the people we told about our plans thought we’d gone crazy. You could see it in their eyes – “Why?” they wondered, “why would anyone pay good money to watch a load of semi-naked fat guys trying to beat each other up?” To which my response is this: please don’t criticise what you don’t understand.

Our connections with sumo

Mrs P and I first encountered sumo in the mid-1980s, when we were able to watch parts of a tournament on television during a vacation visit to Japan. We were intrigued, quickly spotting that this apparently crude and brutal sport is more subtle than it first appears, being rooted in at least 2,000 years of Japanese history and culture. We realised very quicky that if ever the opportunity arose we would like to get to know more about this unfamiliar, but strangely fascinating activity.

A few years later in 1991 the Japan Festival, which was held in London and across the UK, included the first-ever official sumo tournament to be held outside Japan. We managed to get tickets for one day of that event, which was held at the Royal Albert Hall, and so managed to watch sumo live and in the flesh for the first time.

Eight years later we returned for a second visit to Japan. We were staying with a friend who worked at the British Embassy, and through his connections were able to get tickets for one day of the September sumo tournament at the Kokugikan in Tokyo, the country’s foremost sumo arena. It was a wonderful, strangely exotic experience that we have never forgotten.

Although in recent years we have been able to follow sumo on television courtesy of broadcasts by NHK World, we assumed that we would never again get the chance to experience it first-hand. So, when we learned that Grand Sumo was to return to the Royal Albert Hall in October 2025, we were desperate to get tickets.

On the day that tickets went on sale Mrs P logged onto the ticket line the moment it went live, and found that there were already more than 1,000 people in the queue ahead of her! It was evident that the tournament was going to be a big success, and luckily, after a long wait and a lot of anxiety, she was able to bag tickets for the first two days of the five-day event.

Sumo’s history, rituals and rules

Sumo wrestling has an extraordinarily long history. Prehistoric wall paintings suggest that it evolved out of a ritual agricultural dance that was performed to pray for a good harvest. The earliest written references date from the early 8th century, and tell the story of a bout fought between two warlords – in the presence of the Emperor – in 23BCE.

Before the day’s sumo begins the wrestlers parade in all their finery

From the 8th century, ritual sumo was carried out at the imperial court to predict the year’s harvest and to pray for abundance and prosperity. Beginning in the 12th century, it evolved into a form of combat training for samurai warriors. A few hundred years later, Japan embarked upon a long period of isolation from the outside world. Peace reigned supreme, and because samurai warriors no longer needed to fight, sumo wrestling began to develop into a form of entertainment, often as a way to raise money for the repair of shrines and temples. Thus was sumo professionalised.

In the mid-nineteenth century Japan opened up again to foreign contacts and sumo was perceived to be old fashioned, a relic of the past that needed to be relegated to the pages of history. However, in 1884 the Emperor organised a tournament which proved to be a turning point for the sport. Instead of appearing old fashioned, sumo was now seen as a national symbol, part of a shared heritage in which all Japanese people could take pride. And so it remains today.

Grand champion Hoshoryu performs a traditional ring-entering ceremony. He went on to win the tournament (“basho” in Jananese) .

Rituals and ceremonies abound in sumo, and help make it like no other sport I’ve ever seen. These include (1) the ring-entering ceremonies at the beginning of each tournament day, in which the wrestlers (called rikishi in Japanese) parade into the ring wearing elaborate aprons over their belts (mawashi); (2) the tossing of salt into the ring (dohyo) by the wrestlers to symbolically clean it; (3) the rinsing of the mouth with “power water” (chikara-mizu) before a fight, which is similar to the ritual carried out before entering a Shinto shrine; (4) the stomping of the feet by rikishi before a bout begins, which is a ritual to scare away demons; (5) the bow-twirling ceremony (yumitori-shiki), which is performed at the end of each day’s wrestling. Dating back to the 1700s, it symbolises both the winner’s dance and a spiritual cleansing; (6) the ceremonial clothing worn by the referee (gyoji), which resembles that of a Shinto priest.

The bow-twirling ceremony marks the end of the day’s sumo

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The basic rules of sumo are very, very simple: it is a form of wrestling in which a contestant loses if he is forced out of the ring first, or if any part of his body except the soles of his feet touch the ground.  Having said that, there are no fewer than 82 recognised techniques (kimarite) that can be deployed to achieve a winning outcome. Sumo is a lot more complex and subtle than it appears at first glance.

Unlike other fighting sports, sumo does not have weight classes; so long as he stands over 167cm tall and weighs over 67kg any man can participate. One of the most exciting aspects of watching sumo is the “David versus Goliath” battles, fights between two wrestlers with vastly different builds. In sumo, strength and power are important, obviously, but so too are technique and speed. The Davids of the sumo world often deploy their own special skills to defeat their Goliath opponents, much to the delight of most neutral onlookers.

The Grand Sumo Tournament, October 2025

Mrs P and I attended the first two days of the Grand Sumo tournament, and had a truly memorable time. The Royal Albert Hall was packed with spectators, and the atmosphere was electric. While some audience members may have attended out of idle curiosity, it was clear that most knew and understood sumo. It was great to finally be able to sit alongside and to speak with a few people who share our interest in a sport that clearly baffles most Brits.

Outside the Royal Albert Hall, traditional Japanese banners advised passers-by that something special is happening inside.

The tournament attracted a good deal of coverage in the media and online. Wrestling took place in the evening, and earlier in the day the wrestlers – 40 of them, in total – got out and about visiting some of London’s tourist hotspots. If media reports are to be believed the wrestlers made quite an impression on the locals, and were widely perceived as “gentle giants”.

Big screens suspended from the roof of the Royal Albert Hall offered close-ups of the action if required.

And the wrestlers could turn up – unannounced, of course – just about anywhere, so you can imagine how thrilled Mrs P and I were when we bumped into two of them one afternoon in the Natural History Museum. Shodai (one of our favourite wrestlers!) and Mitakeumi even agreed for a hastily snapped photo.

Ura is our #1 favourite sumo wrestler. He seems like a really nice guy! Other sumo fans clearly agree, as he won the “audience favourite” vote that was run for spectators at the tournament!

Sadly, we couldn’t get tickets for the final three days of the tournament, but fortunately it was televised by the BBC so we managed to see every single match (there were 100 bouts spread across the five days). It was great to be able to watch the conclusion of the tournament on television, but so much better to watch the first two days live and in person in the Royal Albert Hall. It was a surreal experience to be present at an event that is so quintessentially Japanese in a venue that is so very British. Surreal, but wonderful too!

I do understand why, when it is casually viewed without any background knowledge, sumo may be difficult to appreciate. The culture shock must be palpable. But I do wish more Brits would give sumo a chance – they might even get to like it!

And the opportunity to watch this sport here in the UK may arise again quite soon. There is a lot of speculation in the media right now that, following the undoubted success of the October 2025 tournament, sumo may return to London in the near future. I do hope so, I really do.

Wordless Wednesday: Paddington

Posted on by Platypus Man

Wordless Wednesday is a simple blog post featuring a photo. It seeks to convey a message or tell a story, but speaks for itself without using words. Mrs P took this photo of a Paddington Bear tucking into a marmalade sandwich at John O’Groats (in the far north of Scotland) earlier this year.