Sunrise on Tuesday 9 February taken through my study window. Composite panorama of two shots. For those who know the area this is looking east towards Horsenden Hill (the trees on the horizon at right).
Category Archives: topographical
Magnificent Maps
Image by courtesy of The Guardian.
Thanks to IanVisits I’ve just spotted what looks to be a fascinating exhibition at the British Library, from April 2010.
Maps can be works of art, propaganda pieces, expressions of local pride, tools of indoctrination … Opening in April 2010, Magnificent Maps showcases the British Library’s unique collection of large-scale display maps, many of which have never been exhibited before, and demonstrates why maps are about far more than geography.
And it’s free! Has to be worth a visit.
Green Woodpecker
This Green Woodpecker was visiting my west London suburban garden earlier today. I certainly don’t see them regularly, maybe just 2 or 3 times a year, and they are always a delight especially when they stay for a few minutes to feed, as this one did.
It’s not a brilliant photo as I was trying to hand-hold my biggest telephoto lens, in poor winter afternoon light, while leaning out of the window.
Lowestoft Tiles
This is a mosaic of shots I took when Noreen and I were in Lowestoft for the day in September 2008. Round the edge is a selection of tiles used as part of the paving in London Road, Lowestoft. There is a line of tiles each side of the street (which is pedestrianised) some 10 feet from the shop fronts and spaced a few yards apart. Some were extremely dull; these caught my eye. The local planners, despite all the other dire things they’ve done to an interesting Edwardian seaside resort and port, should have credit for these tiles as they certainly are an unusual and interesting touch to an otherwise boring shopping street. All the tiles appear to have local themes: Lowestoft pottery, fishing industry, holiday resort, marshland, boating, etc. These are just round the corner from the decaying railway station (shown centre). It’s original buildings are approximating to semi-derelict (although still in use) but they retain some of the old decorative arcading and the original 1950s(?) BR station sign overlooking the “town square”.
You’ll get a better idea of the tiles if you follow the links to the individual images:
1. Tile 1, 2. Tile 4, 3. Tile 7, 4. Tile 6, 5. Lowestoft Central Station, 6. Tile 8, 7. Tile 2, 8. Tile 5, 9. Tile 3
Created with fd’s Flickr Toys
Megalopoda vitreum
Enormous and weird glass sculpture hanging like the sword of Damocles over the Information Desk in the entrace hall of the Victoria & Albert Museum, London. No I don’t know either!
It was a swine to photograph. It’s quite interesting viewed on a black background too.
Tick … Tock … F***
Aarrrgggghhhhh!!!!!!
It’s flaming clock change day again!
I get really fed up with continually changing the clocks … forward an hour … backward an hour … forward an hour … ad nauseam.
Why? It isn’t necessary. It isn’t as if are at war now. And the myth that summer time saves lives has been exploded as just that: a myth. All it does is create an irritation and cost industry money. FFS why can’t we stay on GMT. We need to start a campaign:
Save GMT. It’s our cultural heritage.
Family Grave
David Masey Grave, originally uploaded by kcm76.
This is the grave in churchyard of St Nicholas, New Romney, Kent of David Masey (b 1807, d 1882) who was my great-great-grandfather and his wife. Also commemorated are a number of his family members (none in my direct line). I’ve been told that David Masey was variously a fisherman, greengrocer, fishmonger, boatman and a lifeboatman at Littlestone.
I was there, rather fortuitously on Saturday afternoon but had only a few minutes to find and photograph the headstone. Had I had more time I was hoping to be able to scour the churchyard for other Masey graves – although sadly very many of the headstones are so weathered as to be unreadable; hardly surprising just a mile or so from the sea. I must check if New Romney have yet catalogued all the graves in their churchyard. More research for one of these fine days when I no longer have to worry about working for a crust!
Modern Day Prayer
I saw this today posted on the wall of the gents in the Royal Oak at Brookland, Kent. It has to be preserved for posterity …
Modern Day Prayer
Gordon Brown is my shepherd, I shall not work.
He leadeth me beside the still factories.
He restoreth my faith in the Conservative Party.
He guideth me in the path of unemployment.
Yea, though I wait for my dole,
I own the bank that refuses me.
Brown has anointed my income with taxes,
My expenses runneth over my income,
Surely, poverty and hard living will follow me all the days of his term.
From hence forth we will live all the days of our lives in a rented home with an overseas landlord.
I am glad I am British,
I am glad I am free.
But I wish I were a dog
And Brown was a tree.
Ghost Stories
Antonia over at Whoopee has asked us to post our real-life ghost stories. So here are my two, not-quite-ghost stories.
Theobald’s; Early ’60s
I was brought halfway between Cheshunt and Waltham Cross, about 13 miles north of London and just in Hertfordshire. And I actually lived about 5-10 minutes walk from the site of the long vanished Tudor Theobald’s Palace – built by Lord Burghley and later exchanged by Robert Cecil for James I’s Hatfield House.
Part of the grounds of the old palace were a local park which I visited regularly so we got to know the park keeper. Behind the park was the early-Victorian Old Palace House, built on the actual site of the old palace.
This is of the back of Old Palace House in the 1930s; it wasn’t a lot different when I knew it. Notice the two Tudor windows salvaged from Theobald’s Palace.
By the time I got to know the house it was uninhabited and had passed into the ownership of the local council, so on a Sunday it was under the stewardship of the aforementioned park keeper. Thus it was that we got to help ourselves to apples (gorgeous old varieties) from the wonderful old orchard and also on one occasion to go round the inside of the house.
The house was interesting, but of course slowly becoming derelict having been unoccupied for some years. So it was cold and dank, even on a hot summer’s day. Walking round the house (I guess I would have been 12, maybe 14) we had our small Cairn Terrier sized dog with us. We went up the main staircase to the first floor. But the dog would not, absolutely would not, go up to those stairs. I had to carry her up; she was shaking like a leaf. What it was I don’t know but there was something up there that terrified her. And it did strike me as especially chill.
We never did find out any more, although I have found this on the Paranormal Database:
Location: Cheshunt – Old Palace House, Theobald’s Park
Type: Haunting Manifestation
Date / Time: Unknown
Further Comments: It was claimed that this building was haunted by a number of ghosts, though details are sketchy
A few years later the old house burnt down; as far as I know it was never concluded whether this was “suspicious” or an accident. Except for a large specimen walnut tree the orchard was grubbed out and became an extension of the park.
Follow the links to find lot’s more about the interesting history of the Cheshunt and Waltham Cross area at British History Online.
Norwich; Summer 1973
My only other experience of ghostly presence was when I was a post-graduate student in Norwich. I was friends with a couple (let’s call them B and J) who, at the time, were devout Catholics and lived in a flat (part of a Victorian house) halfway between the city centre and the university.
One hot summer Saturday afternoon I was working in my lab and B was also working 3 labs along from me. We had agreed that I would eat with them that evening and then we’d go out for a few beers. I finished my experiments in mid-afternoon and B said to go on to theirs and he would follow. I duly did so.
When I arrived J open the door and said “Thank God you’ve arrived I been struggling with this presence all day and can’t banish it”. On a baking hot summer’s day I walked in the door and was hit by this wall of freezing cold – real freezing cold, not just a cool house. It tuned out that J had been beset by this “demon” all day and could not banish it from the house – we were great believers in the power of the mind to control these things. She and I set about working on it together and eventually managed to banish it as far as the bathroom.
B arrived an hour or two later and before anyone said anything his comment was along the lines of “What on earth is wrong; what’s happening?” J explained. As I recall we spent the rest of the evening finally removing the presence from the house. We didn’t resort to bell, book and candle, but we were pretty close to doing so. Luckily the presence never returned.
I would have to say, in all honesty, that I’m fairly agnostic about ghosts and presences although these two events were real enough (horribly real in the case of the latter). As Hamlet observes (Act I, scene i):
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
Signs of Spring: Cherry Blossom
One of the flowering cheery trees on the Greenford Road, near junction with Whitton Avenue, just round the corner from home. Taken today on what was a lovely warm, sunny, Spring morning. A definite improvement on Winter!