Category: England

I Spy with my Little Eye …

something beginning with H. That’s what Sarah of Travel with Me wants from us today for Leanne’s Monochrome Madness.

Well, in among all the other acts, Ripon’s Theatre Festival included a few sets of Morris dancers – just as likely to be women as men these days. And they all flaunt terrific Headgear on their Heads. I mean… Hats. Here are a couple: and including two more in the featured photo.

Horses. I won’t show you show-jumpers, or mares with their foals in bucolic meadows. Here’s one waiting patiently for the 159 in Masham one evening as we were on our way to Photo Club. The last bus had left an hour and a half before. In truth, she was on the way to Appleby Horse Fair, an event that. although centuries old, isn’t as long-established as Morris dancing. This horse was one of dozens of horses and vardoes we see making their slow way there in the weeks before.

Let’s continue to be a little Olde Worlde. Here’s a House spotted last year in Vitré in Brittany, a town which boasts almost no other housing style.

Or shall we go for a little Hut in the grounds of Sleningford Old Hall, or a tiny House, fairies-for-the-use-of, in Nidd Hall?

Fairies make me think of other out-of this world creatures, as seen at Hallowe’en.

Not frightened yet? I can sort that out. Here’s the Hideous Head of a Gegant in Premià de Mar , and a Haunting Harridan from the Puppet Museum in Cádiz.

I don’t want to leave you quivering though. Let’s go back to Morris Dancing and Hats of course, and let the Slubbing Billys cheer you up. In black and white, and in Glorious Technicolor With Red Highlights for Becky’s #SimplyRed Squares.

Perfectly Placed Postboxes

The featured image, spotted in Buxton, in England’s Peak District sets the tone. Here is is, a cheery chappy, just waiting to receive your letter. If you write letters any more ….

Then there’s our local post box, still with an image painted on the wall behind dating from 2014, the year we moved here, and the year that the Tour de France started in Yorkshire, and passed through the village. And in a nearby village, the box dates from the reign of Queen Victoria. Look! ‘VR’: Victoria Regina. And finally, a box spotted last autumn topped off with yarn bombing for Hallowe’en.

For Becky’s #SimplyRed Squares.

A Rusty Red Bench

This rusting wreck is multi-tasking today. It’s lived a blameless and long life in the ruins of Jervaulx Abbey, offering views of the Dales and what’s left of the Abbey in the long years since Henry VIII had it made unfit for purpose during the Dissolution of the Monasteries.

Today though, it’s doing a tour of duty for Becky’s #Simply Red; for Jude’s Bench Challenge; and for Debbie’s One Word Sunday. It’s a little dishonest, as I’ve had to tinker a bit to make it Simply Red. Don’t tell the ghosts of those monks who once called this place home.

I’ve even managed a tweaked shot of part of the Abbey looking a little red too.

Unimpeachable Underwear?

We had some friends staying a while back. The sort who don’t outstay their welcome because, even though they’re there long enough to need to run a few things through the washing machine, they muck in, do the shopping, cook a meal and generally become part of the family. Here’s part of the washing line during their stay …

For Becky’s #SimplyRed Squares.

Getting round Beamish on Public Transport

The theme Dawn has chosen for this week’s Monochrome Madness is Transport. That’s a bit of a facer. I’m not the sort of person who ever thinks to take a shot of a car, or be part of a cluster round someone’s state-of-the-art motor bike. I only notice trains or buses if they’re late, and you’ll never catch me on a bicycle.

So my best bet seems to be a visit to the past, and a trip we took last year to Beamish, a wonderful open air museum,  telling the story of life in North East England during the 1820s, 1900s, 1940s and 1950s.

The site is huge, and public (well, public to those who’d paid to get in) transport a necessity. We had fun popping on and off trams, trolleybuses, and single decker buses, and inspecting the bicycles of delivery boys.

My feature photo shows no trams and bikes. There are tramlines, but what it illustrates is the most common form of transport there is, world-wide. Shanks’s pony. I’m not sure if this phrase has spread as a description of walking beyond the UK, nor am I sure of its origins. There ARE various theories on the internet: but I believe none of them.

Here’s a gallery of all the transport we used as we explored this site.

Trams …

… and buses …

… and bikes.

And does a merry-go-round horse count as transport? My granddaughter thought so.

And here’s a final photo, as evening drew in, and people hurried onto whatever form of transport they could find to take them towards the car park, and their journey home.

Monochrome Madness Goes to the Woods

We’re lucky to have so much woodland here where I live. In recent weeks I’ve taken my camera round and about to capture fresh new growth emerging – pungent wild garlic, delicate wood anemones .. and last of all, the trees’ fresh new growth, optimistically unfurling from their tights buds of winter.

For Leanne’s Monochrome Madness #35 – Woods, Rainforests and Bushland.

Over and out. Nothing now (maybe a Virtual Postcard?) until the back end of next week. Even commenting and reading your posts may be a bridge too far with my phone as my only tool.

A Bench Blast from the Past

You’ll remember Lockdown. If you’re a Brit, you’ll remember the Dominic Cummings Scandal, when Boris Johnson’s senior adviser famously made a more than 50 mile round trip with his family to have an eye test. Dominic Cummings should NOT have gone to Specsavers …

He was widely ridiculed, and here’s just one example from Redmire in Wensleydale, spotted on a walk in that early period after Lockdown, when the world was slowly opening up again.

For Jude’s Bench Challenge.

Night Time

Night photography isn’t really my thing, so Elke, this week’s host for Monochrome Madness, provided me with a real challenge when she proposed Night time as her theme.

Unsurprisingly, towns and cities provided me with a few ideas. Let’s go on a quick tour. Let’s visit Albania, England, Spain, France, South Korea and Poland…

Really though, Country Mouse prefers to dodge big cities. My featured photo is of the moon as darkness fell recently, while the photo below was taken just at the end of the road.

Chairs in the Service of Art

Chairs. That’s what Brian of Bushboy’s World fame, and host this week of Leanne’s Monochrome Madness wants us to get our cameras out for. And I’ve decided to show Chairs in the Service of Art

My first clutch of photos all come from Spain. A day out in Logroño, la Rioja, yielded some street sculpture featuring chairs and those who sit in them, whether alive or sculpted.

More recently, in Barcelona, I visited of of its newer museums, Museu de l’Art Prohibit – the Musem of Censored Art. It covers political, religious and sexual themes, and is not for the faint-hearted, but I found it fascinating and enlightening.

The first image here was exhibited at the Pamplona Festival in 1972 – a brave thing to do, as Spain was still in the grip of Franco’s dictatorship. This depicts one of Franco’s secret policemen.

The second is by the South Korean artists Kim Eun-Sung & Kim Seo-Kyung, and shows a Girl of Peace. It was exhibited as part of the Aichi Triennale 2019 in Japan, and received threats of attack for being anti-Japanese propaganda. The exhibition was closed but reactions against its censorship forced it to be reopened. This artwork has caused various diplomatic incidents between Japan and South Korea. For its creators, it is an icon of peace. There’s another view of it as my featured photo.

My final Spanish shot is of a chair (and the kitchen stove?) painted on a garage door in a back street in Seville.

Back in the UK, to visit Harewood House near Leeds, and show an image of a chair constructed by the Galvin Brothers specifically for the house’s Yellow Drawing Room – a place to sit, talk, reflect, share, remember. Created at the time of the death of Elizabeth II, this chair was intended as a sober reflection on her reign. Its design, featuring maturing crops as part of the backrest, references the transient and intangible.

Lastly, I’ll take you to Edinburgh, to the National Museum of Scotland. This is where we saw this chair. An astonishing chair. It began its life as a simple willow tree, but was obliged to convolute itself as it grew into the form of a chair by Gavin Munro. Do have a look at his website.

Well, this hasty tour has turned up quite a few different chairs. It’s perhaps the simplest ones that convey the most potent messages.