Kentish Express Ashford & District
Visionaries who inspire us in the toilet
If you need to use the toilet on a train between Ashford and London destinations such as Charing Cross or Victoria (or vice versa) you could be in for a pleasant surprise.
That’s because Southeastern has decorated some of the toilets on its ‘slow’ trains with displays depicting Kentinspired artworks on the walls.
The new murals, which feature coastal and landscape scenes from around the county in the style of a photo-gallery, are being tested in four of its class 375 trains serving the mainline services from the Kent and Sussex coasts into London.
Barbara Thomas, Southeastern passenger services director, said: “Our passengers tell us that the environment and cleanliness of our on-board toilets is extremely important. This project will test the design and practicalities of the initiative and, following this, we plan to ‘roll it out’ to more trains.”
This splendid idea set us thinking that if Southeastern does expand this idea, which artists’ work would be appropriate to feature on the loo walls in the future?
So we reckon there’s scope for work by TwoLoos-Lautrec, Pablo Pee-casso, Pan Gogh, Paul Go-again and Botticelli to go on display.
It’s the peak time of the year for marriages and we’ve all been to wedding receptions where the best man has the bride, groom, bride’s mother and pretty well everyone in the room squirming with embarrassment by recounting stories of drunken teenage holidays in Magaluf, the groom’s numerous former partners or the bride’s personal habits.
It’s the kind of speech that will include lines such as “The last time you guys broke up, we were all sure it was over, but look how wrong we were” or “I’m really happy that we’re all here to celebrate today, but I’d like to take a moment of silence to remember the one billion people who live in chronic hunger every day”.
But there are plenty of wedding speeches by best men, grooms, brides, fathers of the bride that can be brilliant and remembered for years… or at least until divorce proceedings start (joke!).
And now the Ashford International Hotel in Simone Weil Avenue is looking for examples of the best.
The hotel wants to find the best speeches and is inviting people to enter its first-ever Wedding Speech Awards, with the deadline for entries of August 28.
Any speech given at a wedding reception can be submitted, provided the speech is on a video that has been uploaded to the internet and is publicly available. Nominations can come from the speech-giver or another wedding guest.
Prizes – including an overnight stay, a golf lesson, spa day, afternoon tea and vouchers for QHotels – will be awarded to the winning speechgiver and nominator of each category.
General manager Deirdre Billing said: “We see lots of different wedding speeches, from the traditional to the alternative, but whether funny or sentimental, we know a lot of preparation and nerves go into each and every speech to make it memorable.”
To enter a speech, send a link to the wedding speech video with #Weddingspeech, stating the category they are entering, to @QHotels on Twitter or post on to QHotels’ Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/ QHotels.
For the past three years a pair of blue tits have been raising their young in a bird box at the Hillbrow Road home of Linda Dodd.
And Linda, a keen photographer, has been following their progress on her camera – from arrival, to birth, to the babies’ fledging – to produce a delightful catalogue of this cycle of life.
Linda’s eye-catching wildlife pictures have appeared regularly in the Kentish Express in recent years.
They have included images of foxes, birds, ladybirds and dragonflies – taken in the ‘wild’ of her garden near Ashford’s Victoria Park and further afield.