From Pyrenees to Pennines

Abstracting Abstracts

Finding abstract images from among my collection of photos has been quite the challenge. And yet this is what Ritva has asked of us for this week’s Lens-Artists Challenge. I’ve never been all that good at playing with all the dials of my camera. I’m no expert at ICM – Intentional Camera Movement, though rather excellent at its opposite, UCM (work it out …) – I usually delete those. Nor do I do much processing of my images. Nevertheless, I came across this little batch of abstracts in my search through my photos. Can you guess where each is from?

My feature photo was deliberately taken for its abstract qualities. As was this one …

Water’s often good at being abstract, and in different moods too. Look.

And it doesn’t have to be deep water either.

… or look at these …

Perhaps even the absence of water …

Here’s a little glossary of where each image was taken, in order:

a: An entrance to the Victoria & Albert Museum, London.
b: A bridge over the Leeds-Liverpool Canal at Gargrave, North Yorkshire.
c: Albert Dock, Liverpool.
d: Reservoir, Nosterfield, North Yorkshire.
e: Lake Ohrid, North Macedonia.
f:  A winter puddle on a track near home.
g:  The beach at Filey, North Yorkshire.
h: An aquarium at the Horniman Museum, London.
i: A display of bubbles on the South Bank London.
j: Scar House Reservoir, North Yorkshire during the drought of 2020.

Rocks of Ages

This week, Donna’s Lens Artist Challenge invites us to celebrate rocks, their geology, and what they have meant to humankind. Bloggers have responded with hosts of natural wonders: extravagant, bizarre, subtly beautiful and all extraordinary. I had planned to respond in kind, by showcasing – as I have in my feature photo – our nearby geological extravaganza which is Brimham Rocks. But I already have several times – here – here and here – to name but a few.

Instead, I’ve chosen to show rocks in the service of mankind. Brimham Rocks even fit in here. These days they’re our very best local playground.

The grandchildren are king and queen of the castle.

But rocks have been pressed into service since prehistoric times. Here is Cairn Holy in Dumfries and Galloway. It’s a Neolithic burial site – perhaps that of Galdus, a Scottish king. But perhaps not: he’s thought to be mythical.

Farmers have divided their land up into fields for almost as long. Drystone walls march across the rural landscape here, particularly in the north of England.

And where would our churches, our cathedrals be without a ready supply of local rock and stone?

Rievaulx Abbey, North Yorkshire, in ruins since Henry VIII’s Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1536

Rievaulx’s walls continue to provide shelter and nourishment for local flora.

Scuplture too. I’ve chosen a few pieces that have weathered over the centuries, to reveal the underlying rock that the original sculptor had chiselled to the form that he, not nature had decided on.

Nature too can be a sculptor. This rock, hauled from the sea on the Spanish coast, has been transformed by – what? Underwater snail trails?

Nature doesn’t need any help from man when it comes to artistic expression. I’ll conclude with an image of rock at its most painterly, in the Gorges du Tarn in France.

Tea and Coffee Cups I Have Known

Monochrome Madness this week has us hunting down everyday objects. I thought it might be fun to showcase some of the teacups and coffee cups I have met round and about. I’ll start off with my feature photo. Once, in Granada, at a bar with a friend, we found our different choices meant that we were served our coffee in the manner of the Three Bears -Baby Bear, Mummy Bear, and Daddy Bear.

Poland next, and our breakfast in Gdansk. Sir William gets himself about, all over Europe. But not as far as I know, in the UK.

Granddaughter-in-Spain is too young for coffee. Hot chocolate is her tipple of choice. With predictable results.

After a busy morning of child care, let’s go for something more elegant. A good olden-days afternoon tea, courtesy of the Wensleydale Railway. Trundle in a leisurely fashion through the North Yorkshire countryside whilst enjoying tea elegantly served with dainty scones and cakes on a tiered cake stand. Earl Grey or Darjeeling, Madam?

If fine china is your thing, you should visit the National Museum of Korea in Seoul. Here you can find delicate tableware like this – extraordinarily from the 12th Century – getting on for 1000 years ago …

And if museums are your thing, you should visit the much more homely Nidderdale Museum in Pateley Bridge. Here you’ll find tableware from local churches. Yes, almost every church used to have their very own tea and dinner services for those all-important social gatherings.

Another display, this time from the annual Marmalade Festival near Penrith.

Finally, that newly-so-British tradition of the Scarecrow Festival. This one’s from last year’s village fete at Kirkby Malzeard, our village-next-door.

So, Sarah of Travels with Me, who’s prompted this week’s challenge for Leanne’s Monochrome Madness: here’s a slice of life from those so-important moments of down-time. No high class photos here. Quite simply high-class memories.

Monday Portraits … Because it’s That Time of Year

19th Century, 18th Century, 21st Century

Here’s a view of the National Museum of the Royal Navy, Hartlepool. In the background is HMS Trincomalee, built in Mumbai (Bombay then) just after the Napoleonic Wars. Then there is a row of Georgian buildings, now housing many of the museum’s displays. And in front of them is … the car park.

For Debbie’s Six Word Saturday.

A Townie’s Jaunt to the Countryside

You live in a town – maybe even a big city. And on a nice Sunday afternoon, you fancy a ride out to the country to see what you can see. What do you want to find?

Maybe a barn, or even better barns, dotted round the pastureland.

In Yorkshire, or ‘up north’ at any rate, a drystone wall wouldn’t go amiss.

You have to see a flock of sheep, a few cows. A gaggle of geese too maybe?

And a farmer at work – yes, even on a Sunday …

And a rusting old tractor in a tumbledown barn?

And you need to drive along ‘the rolling English road‘, made, according to GK Chesterton, by ‘the rolling English drunkard‘.

And to make your day complete, just before you head back to town and all mod cons, you’d quite like to have to grind to a halt on the road because…

For Leanne’s Monochrome Madness: Outside the city and into the country.

Crossroads?

For Debbie’s One Word Sunday.

Six Degrees of Separation: from India to the Arctic

On the first Saturday of every month, a book is chosen as a starting point and linked to six other books to form a chain. Readers and bloggers are invited to join in by creating their own ‘chain’ leading from the selected book.

Kate: Books are my Favourite and Best

This month’s Six Degrees of Separation Challenge invites us to start with a favourite Lonely Planet travel guide. I rarely use physical guide books any more, but one old friend I won’t be parted from, even though I’m unlikely to travel there again is their guide to South India. This was my bible when, newly retired, I spent a month there, largely solo, in 2007. My travels there began my blogging career, though on a different platform.

I’m taking an easy option for this month’s post. I’m whizzing us to six different countries or regions via a book set in each of them.

We’ll start not in Asia, but in Africa: Nigeria. Blessings, by Chukwuebuka Ibeh. Obiefuna is the elder son of a couple who had long waited for a child. He’s doing well at school, but isn’t the football-playing, loud and gregarious lad his parents expected. The arrival of a live-in apprentice arouses unexpected feelings in the boy, and his father catches them heading towards an intimate moment. We follow Obiefuna’s adolescence as he’s banished to a strict Christian seminary. We watch him grow into young adulthood where his homosexuality is always a source of shame, even danger in Nigeria’s deeply homophobic society. Obiefuna is a sensitively drawn and rounded character, whose future is uncertain as the novel ends. A compassionate, understated and beautifully written book.

I’ve chosen Happiness Falls by Angie Kim, because this too has a young person as its main protagonist, but her family, besides being American, is also of South Korean heritage. This story, ‘narrated’ by Korean-American Mia is hard to categorise. A young adult, she lives with her parents, her twin brother John and her younger brother Eugene who is both autistic and a sufferer from a rare genetic disorder, Angelman syndrome which leaves him unable to communicate verbally, and with severe motor control difficulties. Mia is very bright, intense, prone to careful analysis and scattering her writing with footnotes. She recounts the family drama in which her father disappears while in the park with Eugene, who arrives home bloodied and distressed. What’s happened? It’s complex, high octane stuff. And while I probably wouldn’t survive for ten minutes in Mia’s company face to face, she’s an engaging, thoughtful narrator with a passion for forensic detail and analysis. Provocative, heartfelt, compelling.

Another book with a family drama at its heart is by the Swedish author Alex Schulman (transl. Rachel Wilson): Malma Station. This was a book I had to finish and stand back from before I could appreciate it. Three sets of people are on a train heading towards Malma. We begin to learn their stories. And we begin to realise that these three sets are not travelling at the same time – years separate them. Yet these sets- father-daughter; wife-husband; daughter are all related. And the story slowly unfolds of how damaged they each are, and how this damage has passed – multiplied even – from one generation to another. It’s a tough, emotional read, with unlikeable characters whom we slowly begin to understand.

A story about a woman who’s a cemetery keeper in France – yes really – is a complicated family drama too. Fresh Water for Flowers, by Valérie Perrin (transl. Hildegarde Serle). Violette Toussaint had a childhood passed from foster-carer to foster-carer. Illiterate as a young adult, she taught herself to become a skilled reader. She married the sexiest man around, and had an unhappy marriage. The couple were level crossing keepers for many years, then they – and ultimately only she – became a cemetery keeper in the Bourgogne. It’s here that she gets over the tragedy that befell her, and finds friendship and meaning in life. There is a complex web of characters to become immersed in – or not. I think I’ll have to read it again, as I didn’t enjoy this book as much as its many devoted readers.

Now to another woman with a difficult life. Restless Dolly Maunder by Kate Grenville. Another work of fiction? Not quite. Dolly was born in the 1880s, at a time when women knew their place and had to stay there. But during Dolly’s life time, with two world wars forming part of it, things began to change. Enough to make her dissatisfied with her lot. But by sheer hard work and cussedness, she got herself and her husband on in life. It didn’t make her as easy person to get along with. Dolly was Kate’s grandmother, and this book is heavily based on the known facts of her life. An interesting exploration of the life of a woman during a period of huge evolution and change, written with sympathy and some understanding of a somewhat bitter, difficult individual.

Finally, another story – a true one – of a woman with a difficult challenge. Austrian Christiane Ritter wrote an account of her year in the Arctic in A Woman in the Polar Night (transl. Jane Degras).In 1934, Ritter, a painter, left her ordinary life with a teenage daughter to join her husband in his life as trapper in Arctic Spitsbergen. It turns out to be as cold and inhospitable as we all imagine, and twice as primitive. Seals have to be caught and processed: birds too, and these fatty unfamiliar meats form much of their diet. Husband and Norwegian friend and housemate are often out trapping, looking for animals whose fur they will sell. That’s enough to tell you what much of this book is about. It’s tough in this unforgiving climate. But it’s beautiful too, and Ritter dwells on this. Straightforwardly yet engagingly written, this book offers an insight into the strange world which she chooses for a year to inhabit, and leaves reluctantly.

I wouldn’t presume to connect my experiences in India with Ritter’s in the Arctic, but being a woman travelling often alone is what links us. The advantage I had was in owning a guide book. The Lonely Planet Guide to the Arctic wasn’t available then.

And next month? Our chain will begin with Stella Prize 2024’s long listed The Anniversary, by Stephanie Bishop.

All my illustrations this month, apart from the Indian photo, which is my own, come from Pexels. With thanks to the photographers Emmanuel Slope, Kindel Media, Koolshooters, Efrem Efre, Pat Whelen & Kristaps Ungurs.

Water in Motion?

You want water in motion, Sofia, for your Lens-Artist Challenge? You’ve come to the right place. We speak of little else in England this year. Look at this.

A dismal moment sheltering by the River Skell in Ripon.

Or this, taken through the windows of Christ the King Cathedral, Liverpool.

But without this rain, we wouldn’t have those glorious tumbling riverside views: these are both from Yorkshire: I’m focussing on England for this post – it seems appropriate.

Water’s playful too: especially in the hands of a sculptor. Here’s Atlas with his sea gods at Castle Howard, Yorkshire. A fuller image is shown as the featured photo.

And a child in Granary Square, London is certainly having fun.

Fountain, Granary Square, Kings Cross London.

But we’ll conclude with a more typical London view, overlooking the River Thames.

The River Thames passing through central London.

The Biggest Easter Egg You’ll See This Year?

Almost anyone who visits Harrogate considers that taking morning coffee or afternoon tea at Betty’s is part of the deal. This iconic part of the town has been here since 1919, and has the reputation of being thoroughly civilised, with the highest standards. Whatever you choose to eat or drink will be delicious, and elegantly served. But it’ll cost you.

Something else that could cost you is the egg that forms a traditional part of its display every Easter. It weighs in at over 5 kg. but could be yours for £375. You can read all about it here.

For Brian’s Last on the Card