Tag: GeometricJanuary

Geometry in Mosaic Form

Today, Malcolm and I took ourselves off to Premià’s Museu Romà. It’s a museum brought into being because of a discovery during the development of new buildings in the 1990s of an important Roman site. It proved to have been what we might consider a conference and exhibition centre, built in the 5th century CE and an important place to promote the greatly appreciated wine grown on the estate. As the Roman Empire fell, so did the building’s fortunes. But after a few years, it re-invented itself, finding a new use as a home and wine-producing business. And later still, as a graveyard.

Star of the show is a wonderful floor mosaic, incredibly detailed and beautiful by any standards, and employing a full range of geometric idioms. It was hard to photograph satisfactorily, but here are a few shots – square of course.

GeometricJanuary

Geometry at the Gym

We thought that the children here in Catalonia went back to school today. But no, as I discovered when I tried to take Anaïs along this morning. So instead, we went to the gym. A trampolining sort of a place, and full of geometric shapes. The kids bouncing around are blurred, because they were bounding at speed. Anaïs is in pink, towards the back.

GeometricJanuary

Geometry: A Nice Rectangular Box

Do you know the children’s story book My Cat likes to Hide in Boxes? My children loved it, and this morning, we learnt that the message of the story is entirely true.

Today, Reyes – in the Spanish-speaking world – the Three Kings delivered all their presents in the wee small hours (they have a magic key to get into every home), and – not a lot later – excited children were busy opening them.

And in this house, Archie proved that it’s quite true that he likes to hide in a (rectangular) box in which a present was recently contained.

GeometricJanuary

Geomètric Cavalcada del Reis Mags

Did you know that the Three Kings who brought gifts to the baby Jesus arrived in a ship? No, neither did I till this evening. Look.

They’ve already done what they had to do by visiting the Christ child. Now here they are approaching Premià de Mar, preparing to bring gifts tonight to all the good children in town. The ship flies the (geometric) flag of Saint George, patron saint of Catalonia. And the port itself is geometric enough, with the masts of so many sailing ships as a foil to the choir singing to welcome the three monarchs.

Later, they put in an appearance at the town square, then processed round the town. I have better (I hope) photos of the event on my camera, but for now, let’s make do with a few mobile phone snapshots – and not very geometric at that. Not so much of the kings, but of their elephants; drummers; coal wagons (naughty children get coal, not presents); post-people receiving letters written by hopeful children. Pictures of the kings, of the distributors of sweets, and other assorted bits of fun will have to wait for another day.

GeometricJanuary

Geometry on the Road

We drove from Arras to Beaune today, having seen almost nothing of Arras, because my evening stroll yesterday in atrocious rain left me with a coat I actually had to wring out. Today was little better. In fact the vanishing point on the motorway planned as today’s contribution vanished itself in a welter of sleet, rain, fog and thoroughly English style bad weather.

Anyway, later we spotted some (sorry to be pretentious, but I genuinely can’t remember the English word) geometric éoliennes.  Here.

So that’s two squares today, and the weather improves tomorrow! We hope …

Becky’s GeometricJanuary

Geometry-at-Sea

It’s time for Squares again. It’s a month when Becky takes up her place on the Blogging Podium to orchestrate photographic offerings from all over the blogosphere. Just two rules. The photo must be square, and this month, its theme must be Geometry.

I’m scheduling my post. As you read it, we’re probably battling extremely high winds as we drive to the south coast on the first leg of our journey to Daughter-and-her-Family-in-Spain.

We should be travelling by cross-channel ferry. But even if it sails, I don’t want to be on it, so we’re going instead by train under the Channel, courtesy of Le Shuttle. I’ve picked a shot taken on a different ferry journey, crossing the North Sea from Rotterdam to Hull. Those decks look suitably angular to me. And the day wasn’t even a little bit stormy.

For GeometricJanuary

WP again! I was careful to tick all the right boxes in order to schedule this post: something I’ve done many times before.  As you may have realised, good old WP published it anyway,  immediately. And I deleted it, immediately. Here it is again. Grrr. Sorry.