This week’s pictures hint at two or more stories: at that of the life of Jesus, from whose life and teaching spring one of the world’s great religions. And at the building of La Sagrada Familia, Antoni Gaudí’s cathedral celebrating Jesus’ family, created by thousands of craftspeople with special stories to tell, gathered over the last 136 years …. maybe only another eight or so to go.
‘Story’ is this week’s WordPress photo challenge. Click on any image to view full size.
Today, on International Women’s Day, Worldwide Cancer Research has shared my daughter’s story on its blog. Many of you have read many chapters of this story, but maybe you didn’t know about the London Marathon training……
In 2016 Elinor Hamilton’s life changed in a way she never would have imagined. Phil – her loving husband and father to their two young sons – passed away. Press the link to keep reading.
Source: Running the marathon miles in memory of her beloved husband
When I take William to the park, the playground, a museum, the library or the shops, there’s always a grandparent or two like me, doing their share of childminding.
Not today. Sarah’s friends recommended the new adventure play at a local leisure centre as a good place to spend the morning. I’d be able to relax while William let off steam.
It didn’t work out like that. Towers, tunnels, trampolines and slides went from ground to way above our heads. Daunting at first if you’re only two. ‘Granny come too’.
Which is all very well, but safety netting was at small-child-head-height. We scrambled up padded stairways; inserted ourselves into cylindrical tunnels; dropped through chutes to the floor below, and zipped down slides that, were they removed to a domestic setting, would have to be sited leaving from the bedroom window.
At this point I noticed that I was easily twice the age of the next oldest carer. Just now, sore and creaky, I feel at least four times older.
At Christmas, Tom & Sarah gave us a night camera, so we could see what went on in the garden after dark. So far no bears, wolves or lynx have revealed themselves. Sadly, no foxes, badgers or deer either, though we know they’re there: we just have to find the right spot.
This week however, with all the snow, the garden took on an other-worldly aspect. And the rabbits came out as little as possible. But here’s one who braved the cold. Please note the temperature.
And in the morning, as short periods of sunshine briefly melted the snow, we spotted, apart from rabbit prints…
…. and pheasant prints …..
….. human bootprints too.
Although I rather liked these ghostly negative image prints. I thought they looked out of this world.
It was cold the other night. Very cold. And for three hours, I stood outside in the dark. I was happy.
I was volunteering at Fountains Abbey and Studley Royal as part of an event that spanned two continents: in Poland; in Denmark; in Germany; in Russia; in France and in China. Do follow the links: you’ll immediately have a clutch of places to add to your ‘must visit’ list.
In all these places, for one dark chilly night in February, there was a Garden of Light. Normally, we can only enjoy the Water Gardens of Studley Royal by daylight. But thanks to this international festival, there was a new opportunity.
As night fell, lighting designed to spotlight the special features of the gardens pierced the darkness, revealing a garden in harmony with the philosophy of the time in which it was conceived: where Nature and Art work hand in hand. 18th century music played in the background.
Visitors were able to stroll round, lanterns or torches in hand, focusing on the Temple of Piety and the classical statuary of the Moon Ponds; or glancing upwards at the Octagon Tower and Temple of Fame, all bathed in golden light. The Moon Ponds themselves were lit by glowing orbs – sometimes silver white, sometimes red or blue, fading in intensity as the evening wore on.
The Abbey too was lit up, though I barely saw this as it wasn’t my role to be available there.
The moon was perfect – exactly half way between waxing and waning, it lit the visitors’ paths and illuminated the night sky. Whenever I looked up there was Orion’s Belt – and so many other stars usually invisible to town-dwellers.
Those of us there relished the chance to enjoy this peaceful yet joyous occasion. And as the event drew to a close, owls reclaimed the night, and their plaintive hooting accompanied us as we walked away, chilly but content.
In the woods beyond our house it’s impossible to walk without risking crushing snowdrops beneath our feet. They’re everywhere. They thrust through the ivy, the mosses and last autumn’s fallen leaves, promising longer days and new life.
But they don’t prevent quite everything from getting a look in. Just occasionally, a few aconites muscle in, their sunny faces a contrast with that crowd of snowy-white blooms.
A response to this week’s WordPress Photo Challenge: A Face in the Crowd. I haven’t really stuck to the brief:
‘Create an image that represents being “a face in the crowd.” Explore silhouettes, shadows, orientation, and other ways to mask your subject. As you hide the defining characteristics of your model, notice which traits continue to stand out.’ I haven’t learnt not to be shy about including solitary strangers as I point my lens.
Click on any image to view it full size.
William began his day yesterday by lining up his extensive collection of dinosaurs (thank you, Ben and Alex). Please note the previously unrecorded vaccosaurus right in the middle there.
Then we went to the Horniman Museum, as we so often do.
We had to visit the Aquarium, as we so often do.
We had to visit the new Butterfly House, so William could show it to me.
And we had to visit the new exhibition about colour, The Rainbow Revealed. Here’s William, sitting in the light tent, soothed by the calming green light that followed the vigorous energizing magenta.
Just before home time, we came upon this dinosaur. He lives out his days in the primaeval forest created in the Horniman Museum Gardens. The primaeval plants are currently protected from the winter storms by very unprimaeval plastic, which slightly spoils the effect.
A fine day.
Click on any image to see it full size. These are smart phone photos. Not so smart really.
This photo appeals to the part of me that can’t resist a good scavenge. The part of me that as a four year old, willingly got up at four o’clock to go mushrooming with my mother on the abandoned wartime airfield near Sandhutton.
The part that went gathering rosehips at school in the autumn to send away to be made into Delrosa rosehip syrup; and has always gathered blackberries in season, to jam, jelly or quite simply devour whilst picking.
We discovered that the inhabitants of rural France think just the same way. Nobody ever leaves home without an ‘au cas où‘ bag – ‘just in case’ they find some walnuts, almonds, mushrooms, wild cherries or mirabelles. And neither did we- that bag was often full by the time we got home.
Now we’re back, we hunt down the biggest, purplest sloes to lay down bottles of sloe gin for winter evenings.
And in autumn we never walk through the village without rescuing windfall apples from the path, disregarded by the trees’ owners because they quite simply have too much fruit in their own gardens.
Here’s some of last autumn’s haul, being transformed into blackberry and apple jelly to spread on toast after a chilly winter walk.
In response to this week’s WordPress Photo Challenge: Sweet.
Click on any photo to view it full size.
My Spanish teacher Javi wanted to know what life was like without TV. It wasn’t a burning question for him. All he really wanted me to do was practice using pretérito imperfecto and pretérito indefinido, which definitely made the conversation more difficult.
All the same. He was quite interested. He discovered that I had first seen the television only a few hundred metres from his little flat in Sandhutton, because that is where I too used to live. My mother was the village schoolmistress, and we, together with about a dozen other chosen ones, had been invited to watch the Queen’s coronation on the one television in the village, newly bought for the occasion by a more prosperous farmer. (Note to self: remember Elizabeth’s called Isabella in Spanish.)
We all crowded into his sitting room, and peered at the screen, very likely a 9” screen, as fuzzy images of the Queen in her carriage, the Queen in Westminster Abbey paraded before our eyes.
And that was that for me and television in my childhood, as my parents were fiercely opposed to having one of those contraptions in the house, especially when there was so much entertainment to be had from the radio – I mean wireless : so long as you remembered to turn it on some two minutes before your programme was due to start, so it could warm up.
There was the Home Service (pretty much Radio 4 in dinner jackets), the Light Programme (Radio 2), and the Third Programme (Radio 3). And that was it. Except for me, and teenagers everywhere, Sunday evenings on Radio Luxembourg with its diet of pop music was required listening, under cover of pretending to be in my bedroom doing my homework.
At friends’ houses when I was little, I occasionally saw shows like ‘Andy Pandy’, or the distinctly odd ‘Muffin the Mule’ in which a wooden puppet clopped about on the top of a grand piano at the behest of his mistress Annette Mills.
Later, as a teenager, I’d escape on Saturdays and watch the hugely popular satirical show ‘That Was The Week That Was’. My parents watched it too when they got the chance. But they still didn’t buy a television, and I could have no part in the constant school chatter about what had happened in last night’s ‘Emergency – Ward 10‘. The advent of colour television in the early 1960s passed me by.
What you don’t have, you don’t miss, and television didn’t form part of my life till the 1970s. It’s not hugely important now.
As to Javi. I don’t know why he asked. He hasn’t got a TV. There’s always i-player and his laptop.
Ripon has been a city for well over 1300 years. Founded by a saint – Wilfred – it’s been under the control of the Vikings, the Normans, and more recently Harrogate Borough Council. It’s been a religious centre, a market town, a textile town. These days it’s no longer so important. But those of us who live here tend to like this quiet unassuming place with a past to be proud of.
Come for a day trip, and you’ll head straight for the Cathedral, built and destroyed and rebuilt several times from the 7th to the 15th centuries.
You may make for the Workhouse Museum, the Prison and Police Museum and Courthouse Museums, and learn about the lives of the deserving and undeserving poor of former centuries.
After that though, we could go and look for a Ripon not mentioned in the guidebooks. It was by chance that I found a charming oasis of calm, tucked away yards from the city centre and known to few. It once housed a non conformist early 19th century ‘Temple’, of which all that remains is the Dissenters’ Graveyard. A secret, quiet place, you’ll have it all to yourself.
Walk further up the road and you’ll find The Crescent, set back from the road behind a spacious gardens. Now as then, back in the 19th century when the houses were built, it’s a fine address. Lewis Carroll thought so, He used to visit friends here, and compose songs and stories for their daughters. There’s a blue plaque to prove it.
Day trippers tend to go home for supper. Which is a pity. Wednesday visitors could go and watch bellringing practice in the belltower of the Cathedral. Hearing the bells tolling rhythmically and tunefully for practices, weddings, and on Sundays is one of the joys of Ripon life.
Day visitors miss out too on seeing the Ripon Hornblower setting the watch, as the postholder has done every single night since 886 and the time of Alfred the Great. The Wakeman, employed by the city, blows his horn in all four corners of the market square to announce the watch is set and that citizens can sleep safe in their beds (these days the watch is provided by North Yorkshire Police I suppose). Then he goes off to tell the mayor, who may be watching tv, having a bath or an evening down at the pub, or at the cinema … no matter. The mayor needs to know.
I could show you the Leper chapel, or the house where Wilfred Owen lived. I could take you down ancient ginnels, or along the canal which was Ripon’s transport hub once upon a time. Or you could make your own discoveries. It’s a city you can enjoy exploring in your own time.
This week’s WordPress photo challenge is called Tour Guide. Click on any image to see it full size.
This post is for you, Ros. You’re a friend I would never have met except through blogging. And you’re coming to visit us soon. Where shall we explore first?
From Pyrenees to Pennines 
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