Ragtag Saturday: Three months of trying…..

Maybe it’s time for a Zoë update. You remember Zoë. She was the baby granddaughter who couldn’t wait until her due date of October 25th, and frightened us all half to death by being born on August 7th instead.

She’s getting on for six months old now. Corrected though, she’s only just over three. She spent astonishingly little time in an incubator, was out of hospital before she hit 5 pounds in weight and has been doing well ever since.

All the same. In her early weeks, she did little but sleep, eat … and grow. Her milestones are those of a late October baby. She still spends a lot of time sleeping, eating and growing, but now she’s adding skills daily. She discovered how disarming her smiles could be. And now, she’s putting in energetic sessions trying desperately hard to biff at the toys hanging from her baby bouncer. Such an effort! But so rewarding when she lands the telling punch.

This is my contribution to today’s Ragtag Daily Prompt: effort.

Walking in Woolwich

I was with Team William & Zoë at the weekend.  A walk in Woolwich seemed a fine Sunday outing.

Woolwich is firmly a part of London now. But it wasn’t when it was omitted from the Domesday book in 1086, on the grounds that it was part of Saint Peter’s Abbey in Ghent.

It wasn’t when Henry VIII founded a dockyard here in 1513 to build his royal ship Henri Grace à Dieu. It remained a royal dockyard till 1869. Then a Royal Laboratory, producing explosives, then a Royal Arsenal. By 1741, it had a Royal Military Academy too. Woolwich was a fine industrialised garrison town.

Royal Arsenal

Until it wasn’t. The dockyard closed first. The Academy moved to Sandhurst in 1945. The Arsenal closed in 1967, though during WWI it had employed over 70,000 workers Woolwich fell on hard times. Even though, or perhaps because it became home, in 1975, to Britain’s very first McDonald’s.

It’s beginning to recover. Those fine military buildings are finding new uses as housing. With improved transport links, Woolwich is being touted as south London’s ‘next big thing’.

We did explore. That military architecture really is pretty fine. It forms the backdrop here to Peter Burke’s Assembly, 18 cast iron figures which speak of Woolwich’s busy industrial past.

And I love a gritty urban riverscape too. We planned to walk on, to the Thames Barrier.

But it was cold. It was raw. We wanted to enjoy our exploration. So we will come back another day, when the sun is shining. And we’ll return to Vib too. The bao at this wonderful Vietnamese café are certainly worth exploring.

Walked on Sunday, published on Tuesday, this is a candidate for https://restlessjo.me/jos-monday-walk/

Ragtag Saturday: Frosted fields

It was -3 degrees in the night. It was still -3 degrees, at nearly nine o’clock in the morning. But I started my walk anyway. Right here in the garden, next to this hellebore.

Here were the pleasures of scrunching through crisp, frosty grass.  Through small puddles, frozen solid.  Watching long shadows extend the trunks of trees across the width of a field.  Sheep doing their best to scratch a breakfast from the hoary grass.  Bracken with delicately rimed edges.  A car on the roadside, blinded by Jack Frost’s artwork.

The sun rose and despite the cold, quickly burnt off the chilly white from the fields. The newborn lambs, which I’d hoped to spot in West Tanfield had been kept indoors – I could hear their plaintive bleating in  barn.  Instead – winter blossom, catkins, and a sky-blue sky.

This is my contribution to Ragtag Daily Prompt: Frosted.  And though I walked on a Wednesday, posted on a Saturday, to Jo’s Monday Walk.

As ever, to view any image full size, simply click on it.

A district and its doors: El Carme, Valencia

When we were in Valencia, we stayed in the old district of El Carme, just within the old city walls.  It had its glory days in the 19th and 19th centuries, but fell on hard times.  By the 1980s, and into the ’90s, people referred to the area as ‘H&M’ – that’s hashish and marijuana.  Anyone with any choices moved out.  As dilapidated buildings collapsed – like here….

…. street artists moved in.  Followed by other creative people, attracted by low rents and prices.  Now El Carme’s narrow streets are vibrant, buzzing, crammed with bars and fashion boutiques.

No bars, restaurants and shops here. But in other ways this is a typical street in El Carme.

And yet its wealthy elitist past lives on, in its doors.  Why did such tall narrow houses have such magnificent doors?  Well, the rich wanted to live here.  They needed to express their individual wealth in some way, since spacious grounds were out of the question.  Doors then.  Doors through which a man on horseback could enter.  Maybe a carriage too.  Stables and servants downstairs.  The noble family above.  No two doors were the same.  Here’s a small selection.

This is my entry – my first – for the popular Thursday Doors challenge, which I first learnt about from Judith’s ever-interesting blog, Beyond the Window Box.

Click on any image to view full size.

Washday

I’m a simple soul. Watching a line of clean washing blowing and tugging on the line on a sunny, breezy day is one of life’s small pleasures. Gathering up the clean dry clothes and sheets at the end of the day, and burying my nose into the pile for that incomparable fresh smell of clean washing is another.

Perhaps this is why, when I’m in Spain, I’m a sucker for shots of long lines of clean washing draping from a balcony, or hanging from a sagging line on some tall apartment block.

And that is my angle on why I’d never have a tumble drier in the house, Ragtag Daily Prompt readers. Damp-and-refusing-to-dry washing is much more my cup of tea.

 

Ragtag Saturday: Foraging in Valencia for marmalade in England

One of the joys of being in Valencia was walking down streets and through parks lined with orange trees.  It’s orange season right now, so they were looking at their best.  They’re bitter Seville oranges of course, the ones we use for marmalade.  Juicy sweet ones would probably be too much of a temptation for passers-by.

Orange trees in Valencia.

Last Sunday though, when we were walking in the Turia, we spotted fallen fruit under many of the trees.  A forager by nature, I couldn’t leave them there to rot.  No, we had to gather them, so that when we returned home, we could have a very special souvenir of our holiday.  Home-made marmalade, cooked from fruit gathered in Orange Central: Valencia.

Foraged oranges.
Part prepared…..
Chopped and ready for the final bit of cooking.

I can’t show you the finished article.  The marmalade is simmering on the stove as I type.

Today’s Ragtag Challenge is: cook

P.S. …..

Ragtag Saturday on Sunday: The river that isn’t a river

Yesterday, I showed you a Valencian scene from centuries ago: a man fishing in the River Túria.

No, the water you see isn’t the river. Cooling ponds and watercourses break up the space.

Come with us now to see it as it is today. No longer a river, but a long sinuous public park wandering the northern edge of the old city centre. By 1957, the river had flooded once too often. Too many homes had been lost and livelihoods ruined. The city made the bold choice to move the river, and give the vacated space not to a road, not to housing, but to the people, as a park. At any moment of the day you’ll find commuting cyclists, dog walkers, joggers, families, elderly couples, sporty types – all enjoying this 9 km. long space.

Today, we were there too, walking under ancient 15th century bridges, through cool wooded glades, all the way to the Ciutat de les Arts i les Ciències, Valencia’s iconic futuristic cultural and leisure centre.

So this is part two of my contribution to Saturday’s Ragtag Challenge: and no river in sight.

Ragtag Saturday: Gone fishing

This fisherman is trying for his daily catch on Valencia’s River Túria. I found him on the staircase of the Horchateria Santa Catalina.

Horchateria? Yes: it’s a café where you go to drink horchata, a traditional Valencian drink made with dried and sweetened tiger nuts. It’s rather good, if a little sweet.

Anyway, we were just leaving after our break when we spotted this bucolic scene. And it reminded me that we haven’t yet gone for a walk along the Túria, Valencia’s river-that-is-not-a-river. More of that tomorrow.

Today’s Ragtag Challenge is ‘River’.

 

Reading, Valencia style

I’m very keen on Valencia’s central library. It’s situated in a wonderful building founded in 1409 as the Hospital for the Poor Innocents. Astonishingly, it was a psychiatric hospital – Europe’s first. The splendid space shown here was for male patients. Females had the same arrangement upstairs. Suitable ceramic panels showing suitable saints still remain.

In 1979, the hospital moved on, and the library moved in. What a place! It was busy with readers choosing books, students writing essays. Malcolm and I sat and read yesterday’s Times.

We looked round the children’s section. We found a good selection of books in other languages, including a large selection in English. There are two reading and philosophy clubs: one for pre-teens, the other for teenagers.

And look at this list of activities. I draw your particular attention to the last one.

As one of the volunteers at Ripon Library – one of hundreds us working throughout the UK to help keep the library services functioning now that Government funding, or lack of it, prevents libraries employing a full complement of professional staff, I was beyond impressed.