Day 8 – Feeling crapby in Dungeness

Took the train from Coulsdon to Ashford in Kent. The Channel Tunnel used to stop in Ashford. I don’t think it does anymore though. I had to change in Croydon for another train out of London (you go in to go out, of course). At one of the platforms was a stunning dark blue steam locomotive. I think it was pulling the Orient Express.

When I got to Ashford, my friend Ralph picked me up and we went to his house. Like me, he is a fan of the TV shows and movies of British Producer Gerry Anderson. I have a site (www.tvcentury21.com) dedicated to his shows. Ralph is in the enviable position of being the owner/curator of most of the remaining original studio recordings of the music from the shows. These recordings are from the collection of Barry Gray, who was the composer responsible for the TV themes and incidental music from the Gerry Anderson shows from the 1950s right up to Space:1999 in the 1970s. Other shows they worked on included Stingray, Thunderbirds, Captain Scarlet and UFO.

A few years ago, Ralph organised a live concert at the South Bank theatre in London. It featured a large, live orchestra performing the music from the shows and even had guest stars including Brian Blessed, who was the MC.

We watched the video of the event, which was good, but a bit long and probably needed a few extra camera angles to keep it interesting. But as the video has never been released, it was an opportunity to see ah historic concert I otherwise would have missed.

After that, we went to Dungeness, the place associated with the crabs. The landscape is very bleak and weird. Its right by the sea and very flat. There is a nuclear power plant nearby and for some reason, a miniature railway which has been running for decades. The train is a steam engine. Must be a theme.

I took some photos of the area and then we went to a pub/restaurant to have, what else? Fish n Chips. It was pretty bloody good too. The beer was a treat as well, many of the beers were hand pumped which means it is not heavily carbonated and has a more “real” taste.

After that, we went back to Ralph’s house and I got a chance to look at some of the original studio recordings in Ralph’s house. Now, I knew these were one-of-a-kind tapes of TV show recordings but looking at reels of tape is only a bit thrilling. He doesn’t have a machine setup and even if he did, the magnetic flakes come off at such a rate that he needed to clean the tape heads about once a minute when they digitised them. Ralph’s tape collection has been the source for most of the Barry Gray CDs released in the last 10 years. That’s a lot of CDs.

More interesting was Barry Gray’s actual musical composition notebooks complete with notes and doodles. You can see where he wrote on the manuscript in felt tip and pencil. It makes it seem much more real and more “hand made” if that makes any sense.

After that, we chatted a bit more about the process of making the CDs and he dropped me off at Faversham railway station. It was there that my Mum picked me up. We went to the docks area and walked about a bit and then went to a pub for a drink. Unfortunately, my cold/flu/bubonic plague was no better and at one point we were in the pub and I just started coughing uncontrollably. It was quite scary and also embarrassing. How English of me.

Went home to Mums house where she had made a nice curry. A good way to end the day, and hopefully it will help my cold.