Are you sitting comfortably? Then I’ll begin … a month of odds, oddness and oddities

Hands up if you recognise those first seven words. No? Then you’re not as old as me. You didn’t settle down to hear ‘Listen with Mother’ on the radio – sorry – wireless, after lunch every day when you were too young for school.

I’ve chosen this picture to be my first response to Becky’s ‘Squares’ challenge, which this month is Odd. It shows a sofa at a bus stop in Gyeryongsang, South Korea. Koreans don’t do fly-tipping, or litter. They didn’t, until recently, do sofas either. We needed to get used to restaurant meals taken seated cross legged on the floor, though thankfully, many places provided western-friendly chairs and tables too. So this thoughtful addition to the bus stop’s furnishings seemed rather odd, and worthy of a photo.

You’ve got a month of odd photos ahead. So are you sitting comfortably?

Not just for Becky’s Square Odds, but also XingfuMama’s Pull up a Seat Challenge.

Love your Library visits Valencia

Walking down a busy main street in Valencia a few years ago, my eye was caught by a welcoming shady square. Through the palm trees I could glimpse a few columns – maybe Roman remains? and a steady stream of people drifting in and out of a handsome building.

Curious, I investigated. It was a library. The Central Public Library of Valencia. I went in.

How spacious, airy, beautiful and welcoming it was! Later, I discovered that this building had once been the first psychiatric hospital in Europe, founded in 1409 as the initiative of one Friar Juan Gilabert Jofre, to care for the mentally ill. It was called Hospital de Folls de Santa María dels Pobres Innocents – the Hospital of the Poor Innocents. This actual building was begun in 1493, and was and is in the form of a Greek cross, which housed the different wings of the hospital. It added general hospital facilities in the 16th century and also suffered a destructive fire.

During the 1960s, hospital facilities were moved elsewhere in the city, and the authorities began the site’s demolition: the church, the pharmacy and old medical school are gone. There was an immense public outcry. What was left was saved, and the building retained and developed as a library and archive service. Those columns I saw outside are not Roman, but surplus to requirements when the building was redeveloped.

It’s a fabulous place. Not only is it a welcoming, light-filled and serene space, it’s a busy one. It’s right by two of the city’s universities, so study areas are busy with students as well as the general public. The collections seem vast: the English section, for both adults and children was well-stocked, At one point I sat down in the section devoted to newspapers and periodicals and browsed through recent copies of the Times and Sunday Times and some more academic publications in English. Of course other European nations were represented too. There were book groups advertised, including a monthly one for children in English (obviously aimed at Spanish children, rather than any resident English ones); an ‘introduction to philosophy’ group for children; reading groups for dissidents; for theatre-goers; for students of Valencia’s social history, as well as the usual more general ones; photography and cookery workshops; lectures (‘Football now and as it used to be’). I was beyond impressed. Here’s a gallery of this library community at work on one ordinary weekday afternoon – before the pandemic – I don’t know how it will have changed.

Meanwhile, what have I been reading this last month? Reviews for most of them will appear over the next few Six Degrees of Separation posts.

Fiction:

Gabriel Chevallier: Fear.⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Delphine de Vigan: Based on a True Story.⭐⭐⭐

Donna Leon: Beastly Things.⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Patricia Lockwood: No One is Talking About This.⭐⭐(abandoned)

Sakaya Murata: Convenience Store Woman.⭐⭐⭐⭐

Jane Smiley: The Strays of Paris.⭐⭐ (skim-read)

Sarah Winman: Still Life.⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Non Fiction

Allan Ahlberg: The Bucket⭐⭐⭐

Charlie Gilmour: Featherhood.⭐⭐⭐⭐

Ann Patty: Living with a Dead Language: My Romance with Latin.⭐⭐⭐

For Bookish Beck’s Love your Library.

I remember, I remember … the River Thames

The Lens Artists Challenge this week asks for Memorable Moments. I was all set to embark on a virtual journey to Moorish Spain, or Seoul, or Pondicherry. But then on Monday, I wrote a post about fog, and I found myself making comparisons between the smog-bound, dirty, industrial and horribly polluted Thames that I knew as a child, with the vibrant highway that has become the face of modern London.

I have no photos of 1950’s London. I’ll give you instead, with sincere apologies to John Masefield’s Cargoes, a word-picture of the working craft on that busy river – traffic which still exists today.

The Tyne coal was then. The tonnes of waste are now.

The header photo combines old and new: one of those barges, still busily doing what Thames barges have done for several centuries: with a twenty first century backdrop. The gallery below shows recent photos which contain memories of the rusty workaday river I once knew.

Any minute now, I’m going to get marks deducted for not answering the question. But I am, in my own way. Those early memories are etched into my head, and on my visits to the Big City now, every trip along the Thames in a Thames Clipper – always a treat – adds fresh memorable moments, as I savour the clash and contrast between old and new which brings piquancy and added flavour to my long held recollections.

The Tower of London, founded 1066, meets the City of London, largely re-invented after WWII, and especially in the last twenty years.
The building on the right is London’s County Hall. As a teacher, my mother had access to its wonderful library, and it’s where we often went on Saturday to choose books. Nowadays, it’s a hotel, and utterly dwarfed by The London Eye.
The Thames at Greenwich. Not much changed.
Further out still, beyond Woolwich: the flood defence of the Thames Barrier, which formed no part of my childhood.

I’m a fan …

I’m a fan of fog. Not the yellowish throat-catching, grimy sooty pall that that I remember from a 1950s London childhood, which dirtied our clothing and made us cough while we waited in vain for buses, delayed by their headlights’ inability to pierce the gloom with their faint orange glow. Sometimes the conductor, carrying a torch, had to walk in front, picking out a path through the murk. No, now I enjoy peeking through the windows at a landscape softened in a mantle of greyish white. Or walking in the Dales, barely able to distinguish the path ahead, as sheep suddenly loom before us, concealed behind frozen grassy clumps.

These are all from the Yorkshire Dales, in Wharfedale near Burnsall. Here are just a few more – three taken near our house, and one, like the header photo, at Fountains Abbey.

For Jez’s Fan of … challenge

A Sunset Walk

I didn’t take my camera. I’ve done that walk from home, along the river to West Tanfield dozens and dozens of times. Late the other afternoon, I was just scurrying along to collect our car, being serviced at the garage there.

Then on my left, I saw this:

And I knew that my walk would be a dramatic one. I stopped scurrying as I watched the sun falling gently behind the clouds, behind the trees, as I changed my vantage point with every step. It wasn’t a spectacular sunset, but it was special, as every sunset invariably is. Come with me.

The sheep appeared to have wandered away: the fields were empty.

To the right of me, the river was more delicately tinted:

At every step, a different view: sometimes the vivid fiery tones of the setting sun: at others, the gentler, prettier powdered pinks and blues of the more distant clouds.

My walk was almost over: I crossed the bridge and arriving in the village. The river continued its journey towards the Ouse, then the Humber, without me, and the sun finally disappeared behind the trees.

For Jo’s Monday Walk and Hammad Rais’ Weekend Sky

Tracks, trails and paths

In my last post, we took a walk through my village. Over lockdown, and the weeks and months afterwards, I came to know our local paths more intimately than I would ever have imagined. But I came to see them through fresh eyes, enjoying the changes of season: the difference between a walk taken at dawn, at midday, at sunset. A sunny walk: a snowy walk: a rainy walk: a windy walk. Walks with bluebells: walks with poppies: walks in mud.

Here, for the Which Way Challenge, are some local paths and byways.

Following last week’s Lens-Artists Challenge, when we were encouraged to dip into a new challenge or two, I think I’ll give Monday over to just that – for a while anyway. I’ll revisit the challenges that were new-to-me then, as well as revisiting older favourites.

Double Dipping into some new challenges

This week, for the Lens Artists Challenge, Tina has invited us to explore other blogging challenges, and ‘double dip’ by featuring them here. The Challenge World is a varied and eclectic one where you’re bound to find something that suits your interests: a good place to start is with Blogging Queen Cee’s comprehensive list of challenges for wordsmiths, photographers – anyone who blogs regularly.

So I’ll start with Cee’s own Flower of the Day challenge, because yesterday I saw my very first snowdrops of the season, still tightly budded, but bringing hope and positivity that spring is on its way.

I spotted them when I was on my way to the village to post a letter. North Stainley has three (three!) duckponds – Water, water everywhere, for Jez’s challenge of the same name, and I passed them all, seeing some of the resident water life while I was at it.

Three ponds, three housing estates for ducks, geese, moorhens, coots …

When we moved here in 2014, all Yorkshire was gripped by Tour de France fever, because the organisers had chosen our very own county to begin that year’s race. Traces of North Stainley’s celebration still remain near the local postbox, situated on the wall of the disused petrol station: perfect for Marsha’s Photographing Public Art Challenge.

I don’t remember exactly which roads were on the cyclists’ route. But this road near Kettlewell is pretty typical: and suitable for the Which Way Photo Challenge.

Let’s end our day with an understated winter sunset. Hammad Rais calls for these for his Weekend Sky Challenge. Well, I took this shot on a Saturday, so perhaps it’ll count, even though I’m showing it midweek.

I had fun exploring just a few of the challenges I’ve never, or rarely participated in so far. Who knows, I might be tempted to join them again. Thanks Tina, for pushing me into this!