The A Team Reunited

So here we are again. Two days before the Castle is due to open but there is still loads to do.

Left to right are: Dan, Old Dive, Tim and Gabriela, the A Team Reunited.

Dan has taken over my duties at F+M since I retired, Tim is Dr. Tim Pestell, Curator of Archæology at Norwich Castle and Gabriela left just before I retired and is now in-house Architect at the Natural History Museum.

No matter how much Morgan Sindall (main Contractors) like to use their huge PR team to claim the glory, it was these four together with Erin (back at the office) and the late and much lamented Hugh Feilden who designed the whole damned lot (see posts passim) and got it built.

Yay us!

 

 

 I took so many photos today, it's gonna take an age to sort them all out and post them, but here is my pride and joy, the main Bigod Tower door.

 

I first started designing the Castle's mediæval doors back in 2018.

You may remember we had to build a version of each one and have it fire tested at £15,000 a pop.

The Smithy has done a fantastic job forging and making all my designs. Many more to come.

Just thought I'd pop this on here now as a big sigh of relief after nine years' hard work.

Artificial Ignorance

 Hokay, so Fuckerberg added his crap AI to Faecebok as well as sucking Trump’s arse by getting rid of fact checking for hate speak and kiddie porn.

The hundreds of spam ads offering me surgery in Turkey for dental work, hair implants, butt lifts, etc. that deluged me yesterday had me wondering about the AI algorithm he’s using.

So I clicked the three little dots and selected, “Why am I seeing this ad?”

The AI replied, “We noticed you’re interested in musical instruments.”

That did it for me.

By-the-bye, please read Careless People, especially the later chapters.

So Farewell Fuckerberg

 Looks like I could post as many sweary, ranty, anti-Trump posts as I wanted but mention Careless People, the book that outs Fuckerberg as a Chinese government stooge who exploits suicidal children for profit and suddenly my Faecebok account is spammed with hundreds of inappropriate and probably illegal ads for Turkish hair and teeth transplants and bum enlargement surgery plus a never-ending spew of distinctly creepy ads for underage dating for elderly men.

So, here I am, back in my beloved Blogville while most of my friends are still trapped in Fuckerberg’s Faecebok Nazi child-porn and suicide hellscape.

I’ll still keep this up, but unless Fuckerberg is prevented from blocking and spamming the real world I won’t be returning to his child-abusing shitscape.

Come Rain or Shine

 

Come rain ...

... or shine ...

... smiley, happy people toil tirelessly to build a nice viewing platform cum party space on the keep roof for your future delight.

Meanwhile, inside the keep itself, those less tolerant of the British weather do their best to persuade Old Dive that there's no way they'll have the Great Hall finished in time.

Down in the basement, an archæologist with a teeny-tiny toy shovel prepares to remove the tons of protective material from the wonders below.

Over in the modern section, someone discovers what happens when you throw a cardboard box at a wall REALLY hard!

More fun and games from the castle soon.

Old Dive's History of Norwich Castle, Part Whatever the Fuck; I Lost Count Months Ago.

 Moving back inside the Keep as the modern buildings outside are nearing completion, it's amazing how much new prison-era graffiti keeps turning up from behind old Victorian boards and cupboards.

Here's another lot to be protected behind glass.

Joining the inside of the Keep to the new buildings outside will be Gabi's waffy glass bridge for wheelchair access to the Great Hall.

Here are a couple of likely lads comedy-wrestling a steel prop into position where we've hacked through the Soane-era crap brickwork to the Norman external arch for the bridge link.

And here's what will be the new bridge entrance a week later with the first of the bridge support steels in place.

Let's finish up with another rainy and grey February view of the Atrium showing the previously hidden east wall of the Keep basement and the base of the Bigod Tower.

The Atrium Takes Shape

Well here we are, back in the Atrium in our sexy yellow gilets. That waffy brown plastic drainpipe is NOT part of Gabi's design, though with her Modernist tendencies she might want to keep it.

The lower floor here will be the Museum shop and the floor above the café, looking across to the keep wall and the Bigod Tower (previously hidden for centuries).

The floor above that will be the Education Centre, where schoolkids can gaze at the newly exposed castle walls and learn about mediæval grossness.

I must say I'm chuffed with the structural glass beams; much better than great big ugly old steels.

We do get the occasional blue sky here in Norfolk, though at this time of year it means it's bitterly cold.

More soon …

Meanwhile, Up At The Castle …

Thought I'd better post a Castle update in here. Apologies, but I've been ill over the so-called "festive" period, but on the mend at last.

What used to be a dark and dingy corridor with a low, black-painted ceiling and no view of the flint wall and Bigod Tower will soon be a bright and open area leading through to the old Rotunda and the main museum.

We've turned the Victorian Boardman stair around so it no longer blocks the route in, but follows its intended course up the Bigod Tower stair. The lit area to the upper right will be the new café and on top of that a glass wall (above the glass Atrium ceiling) for the Education Room, leading through to the Lecture Theatre.

It looks pretty dismal still, but it was raining stair-rods and dark and overcast. On a brighter day and with the new lighting scheme it whould feel more welcoming.

Anyhoo, here's wishing you all a far better 2024 than the years we've suffered of late.

It's Monday, It's November, My Back Hurts.

So here's a photo of a doorway just for the heck of it.

Norman south doorway at Heckingham St.Gregory's Church, just across the river from me and down a bit.

Somewhere in one of my old drawing folios is a view I made of the church, many decades ago. When my back gets well enough to move around without screaming I might dig it out and post it.

Or I might forget …

Hello Ian (again)

'Tis the season to dig up my Walter White hat and shades and impersonate the only dead person within my budget. Breakfast at the orifice this morning. The guy with the pumpkin on his head is the boss.

Those who were working from home joined in on the big screen and this is Alicia's reaction when Tom loomed into view with a full-sized and very realistic cow's head on his shoulders. She actually has really, REALLY long gold-blonde hair which she'd somehow managed to cram into her swimming hat to don a Wednesday Addams wig. Everybody wanted to play with Phil's Hedwig hand-puppet (and Dan's blood-soaked chainsaw).

It takes seven years to train up an Architect … Who'd have guessed?

Wednesday Window

Still alive, just going through another bad patch.

In the meantime, here's the nineteenth-century skylight above the old reception area at the Castle about to be refurbished.