India – From Pyrenees to Pennines

Caution! People at Work

People photos. That’s Tina’s Lens-Artist Challenge #292. This is difficult. I’m only just learning to be less shy about making snapshots of innocent strangers, with or without their permission. One way or another though, people at work is an easier ask, so I’m off to see who we can find doing just that.

We’ll start at the second biggest fish market in the world: Jagalchi Fish Market, Busan, South Korea. Here’s someone who’s probably been filleting fish for decades. She could probably do it with her eyes closed.

An experienced ajumma at the fish market

Here are some workers who have a head for heights: Window cleaners in Warsaw; a telephone engineer in Wensleydale; and two workmen doing something useful at a Thames-side structure.

This auto-rickshaw driver isn’t working at the moment. He’s proud to have taken a very green, very-jetlagged-but-too-wired-to-sleep English tourist (me) on an informative two hour whistle-stop tour of Bengalaru, and is cheerfully posing for a photo.

My first friend in Bengalaru: the rickshaw driver who took me on a tour of the city

Here’s a different kind of job. Most Brits have heard of Clare Balding, radio and tv presenter. One of her jobs is presenting a BBC Radio 4 programme, ‘Ramblings’ about the joys of walking. A few years ago, two friends and I had the pleasure and privilege of walking part of the Nidderdale way with her. You can read all about it here. And here Clare is describing the scene before her, as her producer and sound recordist Lucy saves her every word on that muff-on-a-stick while we hover in the background.

Not all work is paid of course. Every year, sheep farmers from all over the north of England and beyond gather for Masham Sheep Fair, to show their sheep off at their very best. Some of the keenest contestants for honours are under ten, the farmers of the future. But the featured photo shows someone who is paid – very little I suspect – for his work: A herdsman in Albania, constantly moving his herd of sheep and a few goats in quest of lush pasture.

Waiting for their sheep to be judged, two young contestants.

But over in India, you could be working with different animals -elephants, perhaps at Dubare Elephant Camp. You might be washing them in the river, or cooking their next meal of jaggery, millet and vegetation.

You might be a waiter. Here are two French ones. Only they’re not really French, or serving at table. They earn a crust as actors – in this case at Ripon’s annual Theatre Festival.

Zey kept ze crowds amused at Ripon Theatre Festival

Or you might be a slave. A willing one. At half term, my grandson was taken on – for half an hour only – to be enslaved to a Viking master who turned out to be extremely personable, and even helped him with some of his tasks, such as wood turning. Well, it was part of York’s annual Jorvik Viking Festival.

Children can be good at working for free – unless you want them to tidy their room. Catch ’em while you can.

It’s a Sign …

This week, for the Lens-Artist Challenge, Johnbo bids us to seek out signs. My header photo was taken several years ago, but seems even more prescient now that it was then.

Let’s stay with the somewhat political, some more serious than others. Do click on each image to see it full size and read the explanatory caption.

Warning notices, some more serious than others. There’s even one from the Lockdown era. Remember that?

And a miscellany to finish off with: a tribute on our local buses after the death of Queen Elizabeth II; a light-hearted invitation to a coffee shop in Liverpool and a less than inviting hotel name in Mahabalipuram, Tamil Nadu, India.

The Night Workers Spied in Pondicherry

The other day, when I posted some of my favourite photos for Tina’s Lens Artists Challenge, I included a view from my room in the quiet French quarter of Pondicherry of builders with their bullock cart full of bricks . Here’s another snapshot from that same room. It would win no prizes in any exhibition, but it’s special to me.

Sleep eluded me in India. One night, I was watching, as I often did, the street cleaners – all of them women – sweeping the streets with the kind of brooms we expect witches to fly around on, exchanging light-hearted chatter. At about two o’clock, they sat themselves in a convivial circle in the middle of the street, produced their snacks, gossiped, laughed and generally gave the appearance of contentment and good cheer.

Doubtless they could never have afforded my simple hotel room: nor could they have dreamt of travelling half way round the world on holiday. Yet they seemed at ease and content. I hope so.

For Debbie’s Six Word Saturday.

Spider alert!

Denzil, in this week’s Nature Photo Challenge, asks us to hunt for spiders and their webs – something that it’s easy to do at this time of year in Britain. Only yesterday, a huge specimen was standing guard over the shoe-rack. But by the time I’d got my camera, he’d vanished. These then, are all archive photos, and unidentified. Helpful suggestions welcomed.

The first one is from India. Perhaps I J Khanewala can help? And the second is also not from England, but from La Rioja in Spain.

The third is from Masham Parish Church, and it’s dead. Is it even a spider?

For the rest, I offer a gallery of webs, mainly taken on misty moisty mornings, or in fog, lending them a mysterious and often ethereal quality.

These were taken in Dumfries and Galloway, in Cairnsmore of Fleet National Nature Reserve. As is the header photo.

The next group come from just down the road, near Sleningford Hall.

And lastly, we return to India, where a tunnel spider has made his complex lure.

A Work in Progress

That’s this post, really. We’ve been away all week, discovering Shropshire with friends who’ve moved there. Getting to know this county and its landscapes, its industrial history, its towns and villages is a work in progress for us. But it’s left me only with time to throw together a quick response to Ann-Christine’s Lens Artists Challenge: Work in Progress.

We’re all Works in Progress – all our lives. But children especially so. Fierce concentration here, and enjoyment too …

Slightly older children can hold their own with adults when it comes to demonstrating proficiency – in this case sheep-handling at Masham Sheep Fair.

Sheep-handlers young and old at Masham Sheep Fair

Over in the city, street art out-numbers sheep. Here are two works in progress: the first in Valencia, Spain, the second near Brick Lane, London.

And finally, two shots from India that I remember well: the house opposite my hotel in Puducherry, whose construction was a work-in-progress from about six, till late… it’s up there as my featured photo … and a metalworker hard at work producing figures inspired by the nearby temple at Kumbakonam in Tamil Nadu.

Messages in the Street

Walk along any street, anywhere, and it won’t be long before you come across a message. Maybe light-hearted, like this one spotted in Liverpool …

… maybe political. You can’t go far in Catalonia, Spain without coming across messages and slogans demanding independence. These shots were all taken in Berga, where the mood of virtually the entire population there was not in doubt.

The next shots were all taken when thousands of us took to the streets, again and again, in 2018 and 2019 voicing our misgivings about the prospect of Brexit. It gives us no satisfaction whatever to see that our fears were entirely justified.

In India, I saw messages that were more like public service announcements ..

And in Edinburgh, in the National Museum of Scotland, this …

Inuksuk, by Peter Irniq, 1998, uses a traditional technique used by the Inuit to convey messages about good fishing grounds etc.

Let’s end though, as we began, with a message, this time in Thessaloniki, simply intended to bring good cheer …

For Donna’s Lens-Artists Challenge #234: Messages

Buses and planes, boats cars and trains …

The best way of travelling hopefully? Let’s see.

A bus can be fun, but that’s strictly for local exploring. Unless you can get yourself to India and hitch a lift in God’s Own Palace … Though you’re much more likely to be catching the long-distance bus whose driving seat I feature here …

Air travel has lost its sheen, since Airport Security and Queuing became a A Thing, not to mention those CO2 emissions of which we’re now so horribly aware. Even so, there is something thrilling about watching the changing landscapes of the earth far below, and cloud formations too.

You could take to the water, and sail to your destination near or far…

Car travel gives you the opportunity to please yourselves and follow your noses, and even to get off the beaten track, but again … all those emissions.

My own favourite way to get from A to a distant B is by train. I sit, I watch the world go by. I read. If I’m lucky, there may be coffee on offer. And the journey eases the transition from home to away by gradually introducing fresh landscapes, fresh outlooks. There’s something discombobulating about leaving – say – foggy England by plane and arriving two hours later – say – in sunny Spain. Here’s the TGV from Barcelona to Paris. It says it all …

Station architecture may be inspired, whether from the Golden Age of Steam, or assertively twenty first century.

All things considered, I can’t agree with the disconsolate boredom of this particular passenger. By the way, you, get your feet off the seat!

Or … there’s always the motorbike … as spotted in their dozens and dozens outside Mysore Station.

All the same, modern travel with all its advantages can seem busy, stressful. Sometimes, we might just want to exchange the traffic jam for something rather simpler.

John has provided this week’s LENS-ARTISTS CHALLENGE #215 – Planes, Trains, and Automobiles, and the places they take you.

Summer Travel: it’s worth it in the end

This is turning into a Sunday Thing. Experimenting with different types of poetry. But with added photos. Always with added photos. This week, as my contribution to Tanka Tuesday‘s task – to write a 4-11 (the clue is in the name: 11 lines of 4 syllables each – last line repeats the first) I thought I’d focus on summer travel.

Summer travel

was always fun.

But now passport

control (Brexit!);

Covid control;

train strikes and queues;

airport queuing –

make journeys long

and so irksome.

Worth it though – for

summer travel

And to prove that travel’s always worth it, here’s my photo gallery. There’s just one problem. Most of these photos were taken in January, in February, in March … you get the idea – any month but August …

… Should have travelled by elephant …?

PS – the header photo was taken at l’Albufera, near Valencia, Spain.

France in India

My last sortie to India for the present shows just a few souvenirs of Pondicherry as it looked when it was part of France’s colonial empire. Those days are long gone. Only the older inhabitants were taught in French-medium schools. These days, as throughout India, English is the first foreign language taught. But policeman still look reassuringly French in style, wearing a smart kepi: a military hat with horizontal peak.

And while the Basilica of the Sacred Heart of Jesus (Basilique du Sacré-Cœur de Jésus de Pondichéry), at the end of the street where my hotel was, might look European-inspired rather than specifically French, it was the then Archbishop, and two parish priests, all French, who were responsible for its inception in 1895.

Well, this is awkward. Just One Person from around the World is supposed to feature a single person in the main photo. But a second policeman got himself into the frame here Never mind. The school entrance features just one security guard, the Department of Public Works just one visitor. I may just get away with it.

A Window onto the Road Sweepers’ World

Those builders hard at work just beyond my hotel room in Pondicherry weren’t the only slice of life I saw through my window there. The featured photo shows the view I had just after midnight every night (I told you I didn’t sleep), My camera – or the way I handled it anyway – wasn’t good at night-time vision, but I like the dream-like quality of this scene.

Can you see a group of five women – four of them in blue, seated in the road? Until just before I took this shot, they’d been busily sweeping all the streets round and about, equipped only with short brooms of the kind that witches in western fairy tales normally use . They made cheerful conversation, calling to each other so they could hear and be heard. Now though, it was time for a break, and the women simply sat down and rested in the road, their voices falling to a rippling murmur of chatter and laughter.

This intimate moment, sharing something with these women who were certainly unaware they were being observed, remains one of my treasured memories of India. These women, I’m sure, had little enough, and yet their easy relaxed movements suggested contentment with what their lives gave them. And above them is a washing line. All that day’s washing was blue, apparently.

Here are the windows through which I observed the scene.

le Rêve Bleu. View from my room. Pondicherry

Monday Window

Monday Washing Line