Ascot and Windsor, Hats, Horses, Movies, Royals, and what you can do and see and imagine, summer and winter

The name Ascot comes from East and cottage. Nowadays it is far from a cottage, the scene of royalty and fashion. But still a place for horses. In the early days men wore top hats and you watched the race with field glasses (binoculars).

In our era, the most well known race is in June. Other races take place during the year, such as Family Day in November, and a Christmas event. However, in 2020 changes were made because of Covid-19 so check the latest on the official websites.

The racecourse is just down the road from Windsor Castle. The royals are known for being fond of horses. The royal horse-drawn carriages arrive. The royals present prizes. The royal horse-drawn carriages leave.

Royal Horse drawn Carriage

Christmas event in a previous year.

Horse statue.

The grandstand overlooks the huge race course. People picnic in the car park. Or sit under table umbrellas in the outdoor restaurant.

HM The Queen Elizabeth 2

Will and Kate. Kate in a lovely summery white hat.

If you are more interested in modern times,  Wiki reports that

• John Lennon (1940–1980) and Ringo Starr (1940–) of The Beatles, successively lived at Tittenhurst Park, Ascot.
• 
  
• Getting there
• Ascot is near Ascot railway station which is on the train line from London Waterloo to Reading.

Most years, prior to Covid-19, I would drive or take the train to Wales, passing Windsor castle.

Before, after or instead you might like to visit Windsor. Windsor is dominated by the castle. , has a railway museum with statues of the royals.

I have been there many times and walked across the bridge to Eton where in one of many old pubs we had Eton mess, which means crushed meringue and strawberries and cream. Essentially a summer dish.

If you cannot get to the racecourse, in winter you can see the Christmas lights in Windsor. 

A hotel in the USA has an Ascot trophy.

Family Holiday Reading

Black Beauty by Anna Sewell.

Film (Americans say movie)

A view to a kill (1984), a James Bond film starring Roger Moore, includes a short scene at Ascot early in the film.

My Fair Lady, (1964) starring Audrey Hepburn and Rex Harrison, also includes a racecourse scene.

 Useful Websites

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ascot,_Berkshire

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ascot_Racecourse#Royal_Ascot

About the Author, Angela Lansbury

BIOGRAPHY

Angela Lansbury B A Hons ACG ALB PM5 EH5 DL5 VC5 
The Author of several books including  Etiquette For Every Occasion. Wedding Speeches & Toasts. How to be the Best Man. Quick Quotations. Who Said What When.

Blogs travelwithangelalansbury.blogspot.com

dressofthedayangela.blogspot.com

translateforfun.blogspot.com

Braddell Heights Advanced Toastmasters Speakers Club Vice President Public Relations (VPPR), Previous President

Join BHA 1st Wednesday 7pm and 3rd Saturday 2 pm Singapore time on bha.learncool.sg  

Vice President Public Relations (VP PR) of Tampines Changkat Advanced;

Secretary of weekly online Singapore International Dynamic Toastmasters Speakers’ Club;

Member and past president of Harrovians toastmasters club, UK; Past member of HOD Toastmasters, London. Past member in Singapore of: Toastmasters Club of Singapore (TCS); Tiarel; and Senja Cashew.

More details from Toastmasters International find a club.

Regular attendee at annual Swanwick Writers’ School, England.

Regular attendee at annual Writers’ Holiday, Wales.

Contributor to poetry readings, and after tea courses on: Speaking On Radio To Promote Books; and Plots And Character.

Winner of many club and area speaking contests in the UK and Singapore.

Language advisor to Empire Toastmasters club in Indonesia.

Language and speech workshops in Singapore.

Speaker on radio and TV in England, Scotland, the USA, and Australia.

Compiler of a school course on public speaking for teachers to prepare pupils for school open days with attending ceremonies before government ministers, Singapore.

Former member of Harrow Writers’ Circle, London, and two writing groups in Singapore.

Angela is on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Twitter. She would be delighted to link up with new friends.

 Please share links to your favourite posts.

Vietnamese Women's Museum, Hanoi, women in war, peace and life expectancy

Vietnamese Women's Museum, Hanoi. Exterior front. Photo by Angela Lansbury.

The outside is colourful and inside on the ground floor is small and welcoming with a giant gold statue and museum shops on both sides. Buy your ticket and go upstairs. This museum is on several floors. One level is about marriage and rather like the Ethnology museum. Patrilinial and Matrilinial societies, colourful costumes, cross-stitch embroidery. I liked the opening quotation about a married couple being inseparable, like chopsticks.

Women and Wartime

A grim section deals with women in the army. Also those who lost their lives as spies in the Vietnam war. 

Upstairs is one room devoted to the mothers given awards and financial help if they lost a husband, more than two sons, or a husband and son, in the war. A row of sad faces. Some aged eighty, ninety or over 100. One lost nine sons. You can see the sadness etched on their faces.

An enterprising woman artist rode around the country, on a motorbike, sketching them. She spent about an hour per sketch. 

On a brighter note, the fashion gallery shows traditional dresses. Some recent versions of the ankle-length elegant traditional designs would look great at a wedding or dinner dance or ball.

Working Women

Woman are shown in various professions and entrepreneurial enterprises. One woman who was orphaned as a child, set up a home for orphaned children. Others founded craft industries, teaching rural and poor women how to create beautiful or useful objects and earn a living. I recall a mother and daughter who were pioneer doctors. 

We did not rent the audio guide. For the time we had to spend, the trilingual captions in Vietnamese, French and English were sufficient. The human guides going around were very well spoken and informative. I stopped one to ask a quick question - what is the life expectancy in Vietnam. He told me 69 for men, 72 for women.That is about ten years less than in the UK. You can check tables of life expectancy around the world on line and in Wikipedia. 

The shop sells good jewellery, bangles and more.

As you leave, on the right there's an art gallery about domestic violence and the refuges. Very striking images, a bed, a living room with a sofa, a broken mirror.

Travel information
Restaurant
www.hungryhanoi.com

For hotels
booking.com
Comparison site:
https://www.clicktripz.com/rates/search/index
For airlines
travelok.com
vietJetair.com (Comprehensive list of budget airlines in Wikivoyage.)
For transport
https://www.grab.com/vn/en/

Language
Duolingo.com 
(Remember to click on the sound symbol to hear how words are pronounced.) 

Author

Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer. Please share links to your favourite posts.

Colourful seating. Contrasting colors

I saw these lovely seat colours in an office which I visited in Singapore to give an English language evaluation for speeches. What delightful uplifting colors.

The colours are purple, yellow and royal blue. Not a colour combination I would have thought of. 

The colours divide up the seating so you can select a space and not overlap into anybody else's space.  

Could that yellow, pale colour, ever get stained or dirty or faded? I bet it's treated with stain repellent. 

If anything goes wrong, maybe the cushions are reversible. Maybe you can order spares, just of the odd cushions, not the entire sequence of seats. Alternatively, keep spare cushions in their wrapper in case the company changes the colours or lines or goes out of business. 

However, fashions change. A new decorating department may wish to make improvements. The office will probably change the seating style and redecorate before the suppliers go out of business. For now, it looks lovely. 

The backs give support, but are low enough to allow a picture window view.

The port, I was told, will eventually be moved. Then what? Maybe a marina or something pretty. Singapore does not allow derelict sites spoiling the garden city.

Even on business, without visiting a single tourist site, you get an impression of the landscape and modern development and the philosophy of the country of Singapore.

Useful Websites

singaporeair.com

visitsingapore.com

Author

Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.

Listed Buildings To Visit And Photograph

If you want to take a daily walk or a free tour of your area of the city where you are living or visiting, look at a map and find the historic buildings nearby. You might pick historic buildings in your nearest high street, or old buildings in the countryside or down leafy side streets.

Map Search
My family did a search in north west London and we were amazed at the number of listed buildings. A great opportunity for a walk and some photography.

St Anselm's Church, Hatch End.
Photo by Angela Lansbury. Copyright.

Timing Your Trip
If your primary aim is fresh air and free of noise, you might choose to walk early in the morning. A late uncle of mine used to travel the world and take photos (actually colour slides - I still have them) of temples and buildings around the world at dawn.

You might also try gardens and parks with the morning dew. Carry a plastic bag like a dog poop scoop to remove litter from the ground, especially cigarette butts dropped around doorways, for your romantic photos.

Reality Pictures
Other people prefer to show life how it is. They like to reveal that beauty spots are ruined by litter. The french word verite or truth or reality comes to mind. Ralists want to show that third world countries are slums, dumps, poverty stricken, and not the idyllic places of our dreams. I like to take one of each. First the reality, then how it looked after I cleared it.

People Pictures
I also take a place without people and with people. I had an editor who always wanted people in photos. He said people made it interesting.

Local Characters
But you also need the right people. Do you want to show only local people to match the venue. Or tourists enjoying the trip. Or people meeting the locals?

A Chinese magazine might want only Asians. Or they might want only foreigners, because that's what readers aspire to imitate, or because that fits the text. Or because they already have lots of local people and want something different.

Fashions
I found that people in last year's fashions dated a photo. They look untidy with shirts hanging out. They were inelegant. For a fashion magazine the aim would be to include cute characters.

Passers-By
Passers-by are often keen to pose.
They might move and caused blur.

What if you want a natural shot. Even people standing still or slumped can be an anomaly. An amazing number of people shut their eyes, cover part of their faces, glare, stand looking gormless.

Others are in the wrong place with trees and lamp posts growing out of their heads.

They run forward demanding money. Or try to rob you whilst you are taking a photo.

They move hands and wave and cause blur. They move out of shot at the last moment, leaving bits of bodies. You get a disembodied arm or foot as if you are chasing a fugitive.

The solution is to take lots of shots. Choose the best. (This is called bracketing.)

Twilight
I like twilight pictures. I won a competition from Polaroid and a ferry company when we were given Polaroid cameras. I took a statue silhouetted against the still light evening sky.

Angela Lansbury, travel photographer and writer, author and speaker.

Idea Home Show, back at Olympia, London

Here's a date for your diary, the Ideal Home show back at Olympia, 'returns to its original home' says the ad.
20 March-6 April 2015.
Save £6 quote METRO
Call or book online
0844 858 6763
Adult price £17.50 weekday, £19.50 weekends. Does not apply to concessions. £1.70 transaction fee.

Children under 15 free with a paying adult.
Sponsor Anglian windows. (Oops - nearly called them Anglican, but corrected my typo.)
Home improvements, gardens, furniture, food, fashion, technology, gadgets and gifts.
Discounts and competitions on the website for magazines, shows, rail travel, hotels and restaurants.

More details from
www.idealhomeshow.co.uk
Expect to see it written up in the newspaper.

Angela Lansbury B A Hons, chocoholic author, photographer, speaker.