Engine Room 2

Engine Room 2
Originally uploaded by Brother Swampicus.

Engine Room 3

Engine Room 3
Originally uploaded by Brother Swampicus.

The engines cannie take it Cap'n !

Engine Room 1 Originally uploaded by Brother Swampicus.

Our utility room now looks like the engine room from Star Trek. I want to keep it exposed, like the Pompidou Centre - it has a beauty all its own.

New York Movies

New York Fire Engines I

These things kept honking their way past

New York Fire Engines II

The View from Rockerfeller Tower

Seee previous posts, nice view...

Squirrels in Central Park

New York from on High

The only thing I actually paid to do in New York was going up to the observation deck on the Rockerfeller Tower. As a piece of advice, forget the feeble video displays and history of the tower crap; take a deep breath, hand over your money and go straight up the lift (may Elisha Otis be thrice blessed, for he was the inventor of the device that makes lifts safe. Believe me, when you're going up to within a gnat's whisker of the height of the Empire State Building in one go, you want that gent's invention to work). The whole experience of getting up there is a properly American. Given that you've handed over a wodge of cash, they are absolutely determined to be nice to you. The two people who run the lift (clearly having only one would be impolite) both ask you where you're from and say how great that is, and you're generally Your Welcomed all the way to the top. Even the security guards at the top are actually rather amiable rather than terminally intimidating, which is how I perceive most US security guards. For this picture I did a picure taking swap with a couple. Very nice experience.

Grand Central Station

I very much enjoyed the fact that my very first taste of New York was Grand Central Station, which is rather more elegant than any of the London Stations (though I like those as well; they are grand in a slightly more gritty way). I did the full geek bit for these two pictures; set up my teeny tripod on a marble balustrade, set the camera on timer so that I wouldn't shake it when pressing the button, and snapped with no flash. I rather like the way that one or two people have blurred a bit...