Tag: Monday Window

Latex on a line: and brollies beyond the window

What’s this? Some dirty dusters? Or some rather dingy dishcloths? No. Despite appearances to the contrary, this isn’t washing hanging out to dry. It’s sheets of latex, recently tapped from nearby rubber trees and poured into moulds and yes, now hanging out to dry.

  • Latex sheets drying outside a cottage
  • Collecting cup on a rubber plant

I was in in India, in Kerala, at Gurukula Botanical Sanctuary. Nearby was a village, where every household was growing some kind of cash crop: tea, coffee, bitter gourds, bananas … and maybe rubber trees. One household certainly was. They’d harvested the latex as shown in the second photos. They’d have collected about a cupful from each tree, every few days, before pouring it into trays in a thin layer to set, And now it was hanging out to dry properly before being sent away for further processing

In Kerala, while I as there, the monsoon had not long finished, and I rather like the evidence spotted through an open window back in Gurukula itself that had we been there then, it might have been just a little – wet.

Spotted through the window: umbrellas resting after the monsoon

Monday Washing Line

Monday Window

Monday Window, Monday Washing

This time two years ago, we were in Barcelona. One of our ports of call was the first house Antoni Gaudí ever designed, Casa Vicens. Once a spacious site beyond the city limits, it’s now squashed into narrow city streets, some of its garden space sold off. But it’s definitely worth a visit, and you can have a virtual look round here.

What the official site won’t show you is the views from the windows, and one thing I enjoyed, as I always do, was the sight of the Monday washing drying on the balconies of nearby flats.

Monday Window

Monday Washing Lines

An Upmarket Grocer

This time last year, we were in Barcelona to spend Reyes – the Festival of the Three Kings, and traditionally a bigger deal than Christmas (Presents! From the kings!) – with Emily’s Catalan family. Here we are outside what’s considered the best grocer’s shop in town, all gussied up for festive shopping.

If you think I’ve muddled up my photos: well, the shop window did that, by reflecting the street scene as well as allowing us to see the goods on offer.

Square Up.

Monday Window

A Window to the Soul?

It’s been a strange Not-Quite-Christmas – in our case quite an enjoyable one, and today I’m going to offer a Not-Quite-Monday-Window. Why not? Eyes, it’s said, are the windows to your soul, and we saw plenty of eyes when we visited Knole Park the other Christmas with Team London. Those eyes belonged to some rather over-friendly sika deer. I’m not clear about whether deer have souls, but they they certainly provided a different sort of window through which we could remember our visit. Here’s a picture of me with my son and his son, as seen through the eyes of a passing deer.

Around the world in ten photos

There’s this blogging challenge doing the rounds. I don’t know where it started, but it’s already made a showing with Brian at Bushboy, with Su at Zimmerbitch, and then yesterday morning with Andrew at Have Bag, Will Travel. And he invited me to be next.

This is how it works. Person Number One posts a different travel picture on ten consecutive days. And on each of those days, they ask a fellow-blogger to join in too. So on Day Two, Persons One and Two post a picture, and each invites another person to join in. On Day Three …. you get the idea. I can’t fathom how to do the maths, but it seems to me it wouldn’t take long for a million people to be involved. Any ideas about the numbers involved, anybody?

So I’ll post a photo each day for ten days. No comment, no strapline. If you want to guess where it is, tell me in the comments, and I’ll reveal the answer the following day. As today is a Monday, we’ll make the shot one of a window. I think this one’s quite hard.

Who next? Life … One Big Adventure. Do you fancy joining the party? No pressure if you’re not interested. Please link to me if you do decide to join in, just so I know.

Travel Challenge

Monday Window

A window in a bad way

Tomorrow, for our regular Tuesday Day Out, we’re taking (another) trip to Cádiz. We’re going to spend time near the sea and pop to a couple of places in town. But today I want to take you instead to Plaza de España. Here is a handsome house in a handsome area. But now it’s down on its uppers. No longer smart, it’s still extremely characterful. I thought it deserved its fifteen minutes of fame.

Monday Window

Postcards from South Korea

Today I’ve decided on a virtual visit to South Korea, a country we visited four years ago when our daughter was working there. I’m not – on the whole – going to take you to national monuments this week. We could go on the metro – there’s a station in the featured photo, just as clean, high-tech and efficient as you probably expected. Some metro stations are so extensive that you have to catch a train from one platform to the next when you need to change lines.

Let’s walk the streets of Seoul, where the very first thing that will strike you is the astonishing tangled knitting that is the overhead electrical wiring. We could visit the market area. Whole streets are devoted to the sale of just one product – rubber bands say (yes, really!), electrical wiring, cardboard packaging … or even spam. Since the Korean War, Americans – and spam – have enjoyed an enviable reputation. In a country where western tourists are still not all that common, we often profited from being thought of as American. In among all these workaday offerings are spacious and elegant jewellery shops – whole department stores devoted to nothing but that. We popped into one – and popped right out again.

Towards lunchtime, we could peer into tiny kitchens, and watch meals being prepared, packed up, and stacked onto trays. They’ll be delivered to workers in shops and offices on bikes, or on the heads of purposeful delivery women, who’ll later collect the empties.

But let’s glimpse through a window from in one palace, at least: Seoul’s Changdeokgung Palace. You can read a short account of the troubled history of South Korea’s cultural heritage here

And now let’s travel south to South Korea’s second city, Busan: a coastal city and port, and Emily’s home for that year. It has one of the biggest fish markets in the world, Jagalchi Fish Market. You’ll rarely see anywhere so many fish gathered together in one place – I posted about them here.

I’ve a feeling I may have an occasional South Korean season coming on, and maybe next time in glorious technicolour. Thanks to Sarah at Travel with Me for putting the idea into my head, and to Jude, whose photo challenge this week constrains us to think of the urban environment. Country Mouse hasn’t been to town for weeks,

2020 Photo Challenge #48

Monday Window