FREEZE DRIED

 

Obviously lots of cafes have toilets but I believe last week I saw what might be world’s only toilet block containing a café, in Cliff Park, Dovercourt, Essex.  From this direction it says pure toilet block 

 

though from the side and front it looks far more like a caff.

 

And they serve a damn fine scone with butter and jam, seen at the top of this post.

We were in Dovercourt to see a (let’s say) modest exhibition called ‘William Friese-Greene and the Birth of Cinema,’ at the Harwich Arts and Heritage Centre which is located in the Mayflower Primary School.

 

Friese-Greene was an inventor, who owned all kinds of patents, chiefly relating to motion pictures, though he also had a colour film process.

 

Like many an inventor he had good years and bad years, fortunes came and went, and at one point he left the fleshpots of London for the seaside calm of Dovercourt, quite a posh place at the time.  This is him:

This is him as played by Robert Donat in the film The Magic Box.

 

This is me pointing at a picture in the exhibition of one of his inventions:

 

The  Arts and Heritage Centre was selling some themed beer ‘Friese-Greene – Inventive Steps,’ created by the Harwich Town Brewing Company. I believe this was the first time I’ve ever bought beer in a school, but I had to take it home it drink it. You can see the same thing on the label that I’m pointing at in the exhibition.

 

 

It tasted as good as it looks.

 

(Pictures mostly by Luna Yearwood-Smith)