As you read this, I may be on a train to London. No not THIS train, silly. Something far less romantic, which may or may not run on time. But which will not bring me to journey’s end covered in soot and smelling of coal. Signing off for a few days.
For Leanne’s Monochrome Madness.
British readers! Did you take part in The Big Plastic Count last week? We did. It involved tallying together every single bit of single-use plastic that we bought that week. The yoghourt pot. And the plastic film that covered it beneath the lid if it was a a big pot. The plastic net bag that the satsumas were in. The cellophaney-plastic that the package of pasta/rice/dried fruit/coffee/tea/you name it was packaged in. The plastic disc wedged into the lid of the (plastic) pot of kimchi. The cling film parcelling up the cheese, bought loose from the cheese counter. And so on.
So why did we do it? Well. The Big Plastic Count is a Citizen Science project aimed at collecting evidence on household plastic waste to pressure government and supermarkets to take action. It challenges the idea that solving the crisis is purely a personal responsibility, arguing for systemic change to reduce plastic production.
So we and hundreds of like-minded individuals, school students, cubs, brownies, scouts, guides, U3A groups and so on tracked our plastic waste for one week to build a realistic picture of how much plastic is thrown away and what happens to it, highlighting that much less is recycled than widely believed.
Past results showed that only 12% of UK plastic waste is recycled, while 45% is incinerated, 25% is landfilled, and 17% is exported.
Honestly, we try to be plastic free. We buy unpackaged goods where we can, use our local refill shop, never use products like clingfilm. But still we assembled 18 pieces of plastic last week.
Litter is a whole other issue. Living in the country, as we do, albeit along a main road, the quantity of plastic bottles, crisp packets and other packaging that we see on any roadside stroll is truly shocking. The same applies to a beachside walk.
On a personal level, this audit encouraged me to redouble our efforts to cut out single-use plastic. Whether our results, gathered countrywide, have any effect on either government or supermarkets remains to be seen. And whether the world will eventually be knee-deep in plastic waste, as we ingest a daily diet of micro-plastics also remains to be seen.
Team London and I visited Bradford on Friday to spend time in its Science and Media Museum. And here we found Feathers McGraw, anti-hero star of The Wrong Trousers and Murder Most Fowl. Surely he should still be locked up at His Majesty’s Pleasure, instead of gazing out of the windows of the museum?
For Ludwigs’s Monday Window, hosted today by PR.
For Debbie’s Six Word Saturday.
The British Sovereign has an Official Birthday in order to conduct the Trooping the Colour at a suitable time of year. Our family: or at least the London and Spanish branches and us, had an Official Christmas at a suitable time in December: and we went to West Sussex together. Here was the winter seaside. A couple of these shots are natural monochromes because – well – the weather was naturally monochrome.
And that herring gull I showed the other day seemed to attract a few fans – as a bit of an anti-hero, I guess. So here he is again, on sentry duty.
For Leanne’s Monochrome Madness.
PS. I’m knocking off for a while. Family in Spain calling. I might send the odd postcard.
(Leanne – your site has taken against me. It won’t let me leave a comment. So I hope the pingback works.)
Here’s a window to cheer on a Monday morning. You’ll find it in Chichester Cathedral, and it’s designed by Marc Chagall the Jewish Modernist painter, who enjoyed working with stained glass too. You’ll find his windows in churches in France, Germany, England and the USA, as well as in Jewish settings. Essentially, this window illustates Psalm 150, a hymn of praise to God suggesting He be praised – noisily – with every instrument to be found, as well as by singing and dancing. That’s what this window illustrates.
Chichester Cathedral came with surprises. This quintessentially English place of worship was built, as so many English cathedrals were, between the 11th and 14th centuries. So it was unexpected to find so many works of art from recent years there: a startlingly bright tapestry designed by John Piper; ‘Noli me tangere’ by Graham Sutherland; murals by Hans Feibusch, exiled from Nazi Germany in 1933; the ‘Reconciliation Tapestry’ designed by German artist Ursula Benker-Schirmer and woven partly in Germany, partly in England tells the story of Saint Richard and is a symbol of reconciliation between Britain and Germany after WWII.
For Ludwig’s Monday Window, hosted this week by PR
It’s November, so leaves and petals in the UK have largely done a bunk. Still, maybe I can find a little spring and summer time cheer in the archives, and fulfill my obligations to Monochrome Madness‘ host this week, Dawn; as well as to Becky’s NovemberShadows.
The header photograph includes both: tulip leaves shafting upwards, and topped by the simple clean lines of the tulip flower.
For the rest, it’s a miscellany that took my fancy. But all are either in shadow, or casting a shadow. So first … leaves…
… and flowers…
And finally, a doughty dandelion, flourishing on a brick wall in the gardens of Beningbrough Hall, near York. How it nourished all those leaves and petals is quite beyond me.
This week, it’s my turn to host Leanne’s Monochrome Madness. I decided on Clocks and Timepieces. Easy, I thought. Well, up to a point. There are plenty of clocks in towns, in stations, on churches and on public buildings. But too often they’re bit samey-samey. So I’m starting with one that we came upon by chance on our last day in Alsace, in Munster’s Catholic Church. It’s a modern Horloge de la Création, installed at the behest of André Voegele from Strasbourg, who has made it his ambition to install unusual timepieces. This one is interesting alright. It tells the time: hour by hour, minute by minute. But it also counts the years down, month by month; the days of the week; and the phases of the moon. It’s topped by a splendid cockerel, whom I chopped off a bit in my header photo. So here he is. I’m sure he’s a reliable alarm clock. Cocks usually are.
As to the rest. I have an indifferent photo of a clock that hasn’t functioned since 2007 – the Swiss Glockenspiel Clock in London; a clock outside St. Pancras Station; one from a station waiting room in Keighley; an intriguing one spotted outside an apartment block in Barcelona; the centrepiece of Thirsk’s Market Square; and a clock which is not a clock, but helps to govern the workings of the one high up outside Masham’s Parish Church. Now. Can you tell which is which?
And finally. A clock which is a shadow of its former self. This alarm clock sat in a hedge on a country road which I often passed during Daily Exercise in Lockdown. It stayed there for months after Normal Sevice had been resumed. It was always 8 o’clock. Then one day it disappeared. Life has not been the same since. I offer it to Becky for NovemberShadows.
In August last year we were in Shrewsbury. One of the places we enjoyed visiting was Shrewsbury Flaxmill Maltings (it did exactly what it said, once upon a time). I wrote about it here. But I didn’t show you some of the very fine shadows we found. Here they are now:
For Becky’s NovemberShadows.
Someone has called this place home, since 1499. Current tenants? Apparently a garden gnome and a penguin. Spotted last summer in Bishop’s Castle.
For Debbie’s One Word Sunday: Home
From Pyrenees to Pennines 
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