Fountains by Floodlight

Every October, Fountains Abbey open its gates on Friday and Saturday evenings to allow visitors to appreciate the site as the sun sets, darkness falls, the Abbey is illuminated by floodlight, choirs sing in the Cellarium, and a flotilla of food trucks cater to most tastes.

This year, there was another attraction: a lightshow telling the story of the Abbey, from its early days as a simple place of a life of prayer for a few devout monks; through its successful days as an important religious and wool-trading centre; to its dissolution by Henry VIII; its re-emergence as part of an 18th century water garden; and finally, as a UNESCO World Heritage site managed by the National Trust. All that history, colourfully and dramatically brought to life in 10 minutes or so, projected on repeat throughout the evening! It was magnificent, and a wonderful window on the past. If you live near enough and fancy this kind of evening out, there are two further weekends this October. Find out all about it here.

If the windows shown here aren’t obvious enough, here’s one more:

For Ludwig’s Monday Window, hosted this week by PR

PS. Radio silence for a while, apart from the odd virtual postcard. Off on a rail trip to visit Team Spain, then on to our old haunts in France for a few days before chugging our way home.

‘And Where Does THAT Lead?’

Egidio, for this week’s Lens-Artist Challenge asks us ‘Where does it lead?’ He invites us to be literal, with roads, footpaths, animal tracks, waves and railway tracks, or not-at-all-straight-down-the-line metaphorical I’m going stolidly literal.

‘The rolling English drunkard made the rolling English road.’ GK Chesterton.

But pushing a route up a mountain demands even less direct route-finding.

Hairpin bends in Cantabria, Spain.

Roads over a thoroughly under-populated chunk of Russia. The ony signs of human intervention – apart from little-used roads is that line of wind turbines. Some of those roads seem to lead nowhere much. Quarries?

But this road is FAR less remote, and also features a a wind farm. We’re in Spain again.

I’ll finish with memories of a dreadful walk with friends. We could have done with some kind of path – any kind – leading across this dreadful field. I hope you feel suitably sorry for us.

A well-placed footpath sign would have helped. The happy wanderers in the featured photo above probably had one. Or at least a good map.

On This Day, 14th October, Over the Years

I thought it could be fun to see what my camera thought worth recording on 14th October over the last few years.

Last year we were coming to the end of our holiday in Alsace. Mooching round Munster, we spotted this stork standing guard over the hotel of the same name.

Two years before that, our area’s very first crop of sunflowers was drying out. I thought the flowers had prospered, but the farmer can’t have thought so, because the experiment hasn’t been repeated.

And three years before THAT, we were having a bit of break from Lockdowns. I must have had a moonlit walk.

Three years before, in 2017, we were entertaining friends from France. We took them, among all sorts of places, to our local Himalayan Gardens: featured photo above. The French appreciate their funghi, so we were pleased to show them these …

Finally, in 2015 (none from 2016), here’s some street furniture from La Rioja in Spain. We’d been there with my son, daughter-in-law, their baby son and her parents. Baby grandson is now in high school.

For Leanne’s Monochrome Madness.

A Window on a Distressed Barn

Not long ago, I showed you a local barn I’m fond of. Now it’s time for another.

I often walk along the river bank towards the next village, and pass an attractive low-key campsite en route. And on this site is this elderly yet still serviceable barn…

Well, when I say ‘serviceable’, that’s unless you need to get through some of the doors. But the windows look fine, and windows are what Monday Window is all about. Every time I pass, I look at the layers of brick and ston , the iron retaining clasps that hold the whole thing together, and wonder what stories this venerable building, once part of a watermill, could tell…

For Ludwig’s Monday Window, hosted this week by Brian of Bushboy’s World fame.

Dancing in the Street

Dancing in the street – music in the street – is part of our heritage. Part of the heritage of just about every nation on earth. Music helps us celebrate moments of spontaneous community togetherness. It provides rhythm and atmosphere for traditional dancers in town streets and squares who’ve come to entertain us, of course, but who would cheerfully make music and dance together even if we hadn’t turned up.

Here in the UK, brass bands appear when there’s a civic or community event to celebrate.

And individuals with guitars, saxophones, voices, even pianos scratch some kind of living by performing to any pedestrians prepared to listen.

My header image – the worst photo on earth – is one I love, for somehow conveying the joy in this community in Barcelona – Gràcia – brought together for one special day of events, singing and dancing to celebrate their love for their own special corner of the city.

So why not get out onto the streeets today and see what music you can find?

Ritva is our host for this week’s Lens-Artists Challenge: Music. Some of the photos I chose were monochrome, so for consistency I made this a post of black and white images. To the undoubted disgust of some of my readers – looking at you, Jo.

City Boats

Boats eh? Brian wants us Messing About in Boats for his turn at the helm of The Good Ship Monochrome Madness, captained by Leanne.

I looked at all my shots of attractive little harbours, busy little fishing ports all along the coast of the Spanish Maresme, where daughter Emily and family live. I thought back to our seabourne days in Sweden. But in the end, I settled for city-centre boats, set against not the wide open skies of the ocean, but with a backdrop of skyscrapers, warehouses and townish busyness.

My header image is taken from near Greenwich, now firmly part of London. I’m not overlooking the elegant naval buildings of Greenwich itself, but gazing across the Thames, with its little flotilla of small boats, toward the skyscrapers of Canary Wharf and beyond.

And here’s another. These busy barges and boats look more workaday. They’ll be conveying goods and services up and down the Thames, which is every bit as busy a highway as any other major route in London. London new – The Shard and London old – Tower Bridge provide the backdrop.

But London can offer quieter scenes, even in the centre. I was only five minutes walk from Kings Cross Station when I snapped this scene at the Regents Canal – houseboats.

Off up north to Leeds now, and the Leeds-Liverpool Canal. Once mucky, rubbish infested and something of a no-go area, the canal basin has been transformed into a relaxing city-centre destination to while away the time with friends, or perhaps to have an informal business meeting.

I’ve got two slightly left-field images to finish with. One’s from Portsmouth (yes, I know it’s by the sea, but it IS a city, and this shot was not taken on the seafront) and shows small boats after they’ve been put to bed at night.

Last of all is from Cádiz, which also sits by the sea. But this shot comes from the city’s museum and shows small maquettes which were, I think, for stage sets at the theatre there. I found them rather charming.

And that’s me done. Why not join in yourself, and link back to Brian’s and Leanne’s posts? Or failing that, hunt down some more posts illustrating this challenge. You’ll find we’re not all in the same boat.

Six Degrees of Separation: from Life of M to Raising Hare

On the first Saturday of every month, a book is chosen as a starting point and linked to six other books to form a chain. Readers and bloggers are invited to join in by creating their own ‘chain’ leading from the selected book.

Kate:  Books are my Favourite and Best

This month’s Starter -for-Six is Rachel Cusk‘s Life of M. I haven’t read it, it’s not on the TBR, but apparently an unnamed writer proposes writing the autobiography of M, a globally famous film star who has lived in the public eye since childhood. M casually tells her to ‘just make it up’. And that, apparently, is exactly what happens.

I bet I’m not alone in making my first link RF Kuang‘s Yellowface. Here’s a book I raced through: a book which dissects the publishing world. Or that part of the world ruled by social media in any case: books likely to seize the popular imagination with a theme that chimes in with the current zeitgeist. Our heroine, June, is a young and rather unsuccessful young author, who has a sort-of friendship with another young, but wildly successful author. Who dies unexpectedly. Our heroine seizes a chance, purloins the manuscript of the deceased: spends time researching and re-working it, and then presents it as her own. It has a Chinese WWI theme, and when it’s accepted for publication, her publishers find ways of Chinese-ifying her name (Juniper Song).  Sales become stratospherically huge. Throughout, the ground keeps shifting. Juniper’s self justification for her plagiarism is often convincing, as is the sheer nastiness of some of the social media battles she faces. It’s a melodrama. It’s a thriller. It’s a window on racial diversity as seen through the eyes of a social media and publishing world totally lacking in nuance. It’s a comic novel. It’s clever, leaving you with lots to think about as you flip-flop from ‘getting’ Juniper’s take on her theft , and finding her morally indefensible. It’s entertaining too. Shall I read more by Kuang? Much as I raced through this book, eager to find how the story ends – probably not. I was exhausted.

From a yellow face to a yellow sun: Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. A richly evocative book telling the story of the creation, rise and fall of Biafra, through the eyes of three separate yet connected groups of people. There’s Ugwu, from a traditional village, houseboy to Odenigbo, an Igbo academic. There are Olanna, Odenigbo’s partner and her twin sister Kainene, and her English partner Richard. Their structured lives fall apart as Nigeria itself does, as Biafra emerges as a nation and civil war threatens to destroy them. I’m ashamed at how little I knew of this conflict, remembering it only because of the famine caused by war. Now, an interplay of characters dealing with loyalties, often conflicting, moral responsibility, colonialism and its aftermath brings this piece of history vividly to life, the more so because the author’s family lived through this devastating time. A marvellous and involving read.

Let’s stay in Nigeria and read My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite. What did I think of this book? Well, it was a quick read, an easy read, and at no point did I think of not finishing reading this story. But – and perhaps I’m not entering into the spirit of things here – a story in which the writer’s sister gets into a routine of killing her boyfriends, while the writer colludes with her deception just left me cold. The short sharp chapters, and the action which jumped hither and thither kept my interest, as did the back story of a controlling, brutal father. But in the end, it was a slightly distasteful read as far as I was concerned.

My next book is a story in which a murder of an – allegedly – loved one does not actually take place. Amy Dunne disappears on her 5th wedding anniversary, then fakes her own murder to implicate her husband Nick. She eventually returns home and … things can obviously only get worse. This is Gillian Flynn‘s Gone Girl. I’m actually not sure why I decided to read this book. After all, I’d seen, and been thoroughly disturbed by the film. Why put myself through it twice? Perhaps because I’d been assured that both book and film (Flynn wrote the screenplay) were equally well done. Early on I wondered whether I was right to bother. But then, those details which no film can really get to grips with – tiny vignettes, and thoughts from the innermost workings of those two messed-up heads – started to enrich the narrative. How could I go on willing the ending to be different when I knew perfectly well what it would be? A creepy read, with a thoroughly disturbing ending.

Another, and very different book which prompted a film, which I was disappointed to miss when it was doing the rounds: H is for Hawk by Helen MacDonald. Back in the day, I had resisted reading the book simply because it had become, according to the critics, a ‘must-read’. But …read it. It’s part nature writing – sumptuous, evocative, richly descriptive, each word carefully chosen: part autobiography of a woman overturned by grief at the death of her father; part biography of TH White, author of Sword in the Stone and The Goshawk, and so much more; part manual on learning to fly a goshawk – I now now for sure this is something way beyond my capabilities and my patience. This is a splendid book for the richness of its prose, and the chance it offers to see two wholly unknown worlds: that of the falconer, and that of TH White.

And finally, another book in which a woman becomes intimately involved in te life of a wild creature – Chloe Dalton‘s Raising Hare. Confined to her country retreat during lockdown, Dalton, a high-powered political adviser finds a small, apparently abandoned leveret.This is her story. Of how she treads a difficult path of wishing to help it survive to adulthood, while respecting its wildness. While it is her house-guest, she never treats the creature as her pet, or even names it. Against the odds, it survives to maturity, and continues to include her house, inside and out, as its territory.But the creature has a profound effect on Dalton. She is sensitive and observant, and describes beautifully its changing appearance as it matures through the seasons; their ‘language’ together. Just as the hare is not quite living a normal life, she too is changed. She re-evaluates her career. It’s still important, but no longer so all-consuming. The hare makes her infinitely more connected to and aware of the natural world where her home is situated. This book strives to restore a sense of the sacred and to meet an animal on its own terms.

Well, the chain links book-to-book I hope, but is there an over-arching theme? Not a chance. Let’s see what next month brings. Kate suggests we start things off with a novella of our choice, to celebrate the popular Novellas in November, hosted by Becky of Bookish Beck and Cathy of 746 Books.