Buying and Selling in Black and White

Buying and selling. Where to start? Well, if you’re selling, setting your wares out appetisingly is probably the traditional way to go, so my featured photo is of a front window in Betty’s, Harrogate’s well known tea room and bakery.

The soft sell continues inside. But when curiosity prompted us to stick our noses through the door of this jewellers’ in Seoul, we very promply departed, realising this was Not Our Scene. Or budget.

Of course, sometimes shop window and point-of-sale are one and the same, as with this sales van, where all the driver has to do is park up, leave the driver’s cab and pop behind his built in counter.

These days though, shopping can be all about the shopping mall. Clean, cool seductive surroundings are intended to sooth us into opening up our wallets and come prepared to spend, spend, spend. Here’s the Victoria Gate Shopping Centre in Leeds.

Life couldn’t be more different in another modern shopping centre, Mercat dels Encants, Barcelona. Crazily juxtaposed ceiling mirrors reflect the scenes below of bartering, haggling over anything from rolls of cheap fabric to flea market goods that look as if they’ve been around for decades.

My favourite shopiing experiences are often serendipitous. On our way to Scarborough last week, we paused in a small town, Kirkbymoorside, to stretch our legs and have a coffee. It turned out to be market day. And there was someone selling rather exotic mushrooms: some that he’d foraged – others that he’d grown himself. We couldn’t buy as we weren’t going to be home that night. But his enthusiasm had him talking to us for quite a while as he described his wares in detail, even though he knew he wouldn’t make a sale to us that day. He now has two loyal fans who will hunt him down very soon.

Moorside Mushrooms

So what can you tell us in monochrome photos about buying and selling? You may have seen someone shaking hands on a deal. You may have visited a trade warehouse and seen forklift trucks going about their business. You may have visited a cattle market, or an auction. Or you may just like to show us your weekly shop. When you have a post ready to publish (do join in!) please link it back to this post, and to Leanne’s Monochrome Madness page, as without Leanne, there would be no Monochrome Madness.

For Leanne’s Monochrome Madness

WP Shenanigans …

Yesterday, blogging pal Elke wrote in protest against another uncalled for ‘improvement’ to our blogging and reading experience, courtesy of WordPress. That particular one hasn’t hit me yet, but another annoyance has, which I guess isn’t precisely WP’s fault. I’m now getting a dozen or more new followers a day. Allegedly. They virtually all have gmail accounts, and not one of them has ever ‘liked’ or commented on any of my posts, so I guess these individuals are utterly unaware they have subscribed to my blog. But I just thought you might like to know that as of this morning, I apparently have another new follower. None other than Elon Musk….

A Window on Scarborough

Scarborough is a town that is either on the way up, or on its way down, according to who you talk to. It has some glorious housing stock, built in the town’s heyday as a prosperous and must-visit resort in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Some of it is still glorious, and windows sparkle. Some is run down and in bad shape, and windows are grubby and laced with spiders’ webs – often on the same street.

All smart and tickety-boo at one end … less so further down the street.

Shopping streets can be quirkily full of independent traders (taxidermist, anyone?)…

A rather sad display spotted through the taxidermist’s window.

or be slightly down-at-heel examples of chain stores seen anywhere. Or even cheerful sea-front stores. And as one image below shows, quirkily independent doesn’t always make it.

It boasts the nationally renowned Stephen Joseph Theatre. It even has a university, even if that local seat of learning is actually an outpost of Coventry University, 260 km, or three and a quarter hours away. Transport links aren’t great, and all this is difficult for job seekers, who point out that the sea automatically limits the number of opportunities available. ‘Half our catchment area is fish.‘

Many of those fish end up in one of the many fish and chip restaurants in town. Here’s the view from Catch 55 (recommended). Though one customer didn’t seem to relish the scene as much we did…

Catch 55

I’ll close with a snapshot I rather like. It includes some of the more desirable housing, some of the more desirable parkland, an even, if you look hard enough, the sea. It absolutely qualifies for Monday Window, because these views were taken glancing through the window of a parked car.

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

Scarborough in (Almost) Black & White

We’ve just enjoyed a couple of days in Scarborough, once Yorkshire’s premier seaside resort, with thousands flocking here once the railway came to town in 1845. More of all that another day. But for today, let’s just enjoy sea and sand – in black and white, just because … and in nearly black and white, because that’s what the camera saw early on Thursday morning. Here we are, walking along the several beaches that Scarborough enjoys. And ending with a gull, because herring gulls, usually intent on stealing your fish and chips, are constant companions here.

The tide comes in …
… and the tide goes out.

But the sea … and the gulls, are always there.

For Leanne’s Monochrome Madness.

Windows to Hang Washing From

Continuing my From Dirty to Clean theme with windows, here are some to hang your washing from. All but one are from Spain. The odd one out is our very own washing line. Which one though?

For Ludwig’s Monday Window.

PS. British Readers for the use of. I’m very taken by an app I’ve come across. It’s called The Washing Line Index. Supply it with your post code or allow it to use your location, and it will tell you how wise it would be to hang your washing out today. How likely is it to rain? How warm will it be? How hard will the wind blow? It’s brilliant, ad free and … free. As a confirmed hanger-out-of-washing-in-nearly-all-circumstances, I love it.

Water, Water: Changing Landscapes, Changing Lives

This week, for the Lens-Artists Challenge, our host John invites us to share waterscapes: scenes where water has changed the landscape, perhaps changed lives. In six images or fewer. Well. That IS a challenge.

Here’s the beginning of the story for so many of the world’s great waterways: a small insignificant waterfall, tumbling downwards, eventually to become a brook, a stream, a tributary, a mighty river, coursing its way towards the sea. This one’s in Cantabria in Spain.

One of the many waterfalls in the Cordillera Cantábrica, Spain.

Soon, these little watercourses gather strength and character. Here’s stage two, in Swaledale in the Yorkshire Dales.

As it journeys on, the river becomes slower, deeper, lazier. It ploughs a straighter furrow and may even threaten to overflow its banks unless contained. The Thames in London was tidied up and forced to conform in the 1860s and 70s, under a scheme devised by Sir Joseph Bazalgette. But that wasn’t enough. The sea caused problems from the other end, surging and flooding, often every winter. So eventually the Thames Barrier was built, about a hundred years after Bazalgette’s efforts upstream. Here it is.

TheThames Barrier at Woolwich

Of course some rivers do have coastal flood plains. The Júcar and Turia rivers, near Valencia together form a deltaic flood plain which is a wildlife haven, a fishing ground, an important rice growing area … But I’ve decided to make this shot my featured photo. Look at the top of the post!

Which leaves me with two more shots. Round here, gravel extraction is an important local industry. As each seam is exhausted, the company reponsible does a pretty decent job of allowing the area to flood to become a nature reserve. Here are two grateful local residents.

An egret and a heron at Nosterfield Nature Reserve ignoring one another.

Finally – human intervention again. Not too far from here is an immense reservoir, built early last century to provide water for the fast-growing city of Bradford. Scar House changed from being hilly moorland to becoming hilly moorland surrounding a huge lake. I haven’t been there this year, but we were there at the end of the last summer when drought had hit the area, and hit it hard. I can’t imagine what it looked like this year, which was even hotter, even drier, for even longer.

A drought-stricken Scar House Reservoir, Nidderdale.

A brief tour indeed. I’ve shown you no ponds, no canals, no seas, no oceans. No boats and ships. No fisherfolk, sailors, or other workers-round-water. No pleasure-seekers or holiday makers either. But only six photos? If that’s the limit, you have to trim your sails; limit your horizons; keep your feet on the ground; lower your sights, and other relevant clichés.

Urban Sweden

Many of you know about our trip to Sweden earlier this year. We Country Mice found much that was accessible in the Swedish towns we visited. Pedestrians came first, bikes second, and motorists toed the line and halted to let either of the above pass in front of them. So meandering in Malmö, going round Gothenburg, sauntering in Stockholm, knocking around Kalmar, these are a few of the sights we saw on the urban paths we choose, totally unbothered by passing traffic. There was none..

Malmö’s past and present.

Gothenburg’s watery industrial quarter.

One of Stockholm’s many waterfront views. The featured photo is its skyline as seen from the coastal path below our apartment.

And finally, here we are kicking our heels in Kalmar, within metres of the railway station, the university and a busy shopping mall. Oh, and a fine castle which you’ve already seen. My kind of urban landscape.

For Leanne’s Monochrome Madness.

Cleaning Windows

After last week’s Dirty Windows in Distress, I thought it only right to show some clean ones. Or some soon-to-be-clean ones.

There we are. Four fine fellows, following Health and Safety and enjoying a good day’s work cleaning all this glass..

Oh hang on. They’re a bit further from the ground than seems entirely comfortable.

Now that’s just … terrifying. I hope they lived to work another day.

Spotted in Warsaw, years ago.

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

Eternal Animals

By which I mean animals that have been immortalised in stone. I thought a gargoyle or two would be appropriate on a Sunday. But it turns out not one was part of a religious building. Here are gargoyles from Barcelona, Bury and Bath. Whaddya mean, dragons and frogs aren’t – strictly speaking – animals?

For Debbie’s One – er Two – Word(s) Sunday