Bournemouth ZZ9 Slouch

[watervole]

waveney and I set off for Bournemouth and then realised that we'd left Phil (see icon) behind, but we reassured ourselves that he'd still be able to enjoy the birthday party in the evening.

At Bournemouth station we met up with Will, and Richard took his folding bike to put it in the back of our car. I found dougs in the waiting room and by the time Richard and Will returned Douglas and I were deep in a conversation about Coriolis forces and tides. When paranoidangel42 joined us, they were reduced to playing I Spy in self-defence.

We waited about half an hour to see if any of the arriving rail replacement buses had ZZ9ers on board, but none appeared. It was a glorious sunny day, more like an August late afternoon than an October day, so we strolled into town, bought sandwiches for lunch and ate in the Upper Gardens. Bournemouth has a stream running through the city, and there are gardens all along its length and most of them are beautifully maintained.

After eating, we ambled up the Upper Gardens, discussing what species of tree the HHGG characters were most like - this inspired by dougs spotting a very large cyprus with a trunk split into two main heads which was clearly Zaphod. I forget most of them now, but the Vogons were awarded sycamore (sick of more Vogons); Ford, as a flashy alien that you can't get rid of, is obviously rhododendron.

We played Pooh sticks on a small bridge over the stream.

Eventually (after passing an inflated dome which may (or may not) have had a tennis court inside it, we turned around and walked down the Lower Gardens to the sea. The Lower Gardens have some impressive bedding displays. I normally prefer my plant arrangements to be far more natural, but even I can appreciate the displays that Bournemouth council produce.

Arriving in due course at the beach, we tossed a frisbee around for a while. We totally confused a poor little terrier whom we gently discouraged from chasing it - a few minutes later, we realised that his owner also had a red frisbee that she was throwing for him...

Memo to self - next time, use the frisbee in the Upper Gardens, you get less sand involved that way.

Climbed up the cliff, we looked down at the view and discussed the wave patterns, prevailing winds and longshore drift (I'm doing an Open University course on oceans, so my mind is rather running in these patterns at present)

I would have dived into my favourite clothes shop (sells velvet skirts and silk scares and belly dancing gear) but I was removed before I could waste an hour there. Probably a good thing overall - I've really got plenty of clothes - but the prices in there are often very low.

At that point we spilt up. The cleaner minded members of the group went one way and Douglas and I headed for the sex shops in the Triangle. There were three last year, but there's only two now (but then for years and years there was only one, so I'm not complaining). Chez L'Amour is the oldest one, still a bit seedy, but definintely tarted up from how it used to be. I'm guessing it had been losing business to the newcomers. It's a very disconcerting shop to walk into as the first thing that hits your eye is a shelf of kiddies videos. Half the shop is videos (clean ones) - I think it allows them to be rated as a book shop rather than a sex shop and that either saves them paying an extra licence or changes their ratable value in some way.

The shop is mostly aimed at heterosexuals, though it has added some gay magazines to its range recently.

Across the road is Clone Zone, much nicer to go into. It's target audience is gay men (though they've also expanded into stuff aimed at heterosexuals). The whole shop has a cleaner, brighter air to it and I always feel more comfortable in there in spite of not being in their main target audience. But then, I'm a long time slash writer who likes writing D/s and bondage. It's not just the target audience though; the shop has a feel that is almost anti-seedy, as though it's saying "this is what we like and we're not ashamed of it and we feel no need to stick the embarrasing stuff on some tiny shelf at the back". The displays are intended to look attractive (unlike Chez L'Amor where stuff is pretty much placed at random and squashed in).

I think the most entertaining items were a set of devices (I'm trying to figure how to put this in order to avoid one or two people running a mile...) that were themed as 'army', 'navy' and 'air force'. The army ones were naturalistic in style, the navy ones looked like torpedoes and the air force ones were rocket shaped. They came in various sizes. The packaging was really rather fun and each item came with its own dog tag!

Once out of Clone Zone, we headed back for the car park, signed the ZZ9 meeting book and went home.

Will came back with Richard and myself and a number of other friends joined us over the course of the evening. I got to play lots of games with a number of good friends and overall, I had the most relaxed and enjoyable birthday I've had in years.