I had various Red Images jostling for position on this last day of #SimplyRed. But yesterday, enjoying a cup of coffee with friends in our village’s Community Garden, I realised that what I want to celebrate today is … Community. Specifically the one that Becky has built up, in which the Squarers in particular have the chance to visit old friends and make new ones, and just generally enjoy the world-wide connections that blogging brings to our lives. Thank you Becky. Here are some flowers from our Community Garden. Very few, unfortunately, are red. So I’ve squeezed a clump of pink ones in as well.
Also, probably the first entry of the end of the month for Brian’s Last on the Card.
In my opinion, you can never have too much bougainvillea. It cheers up any town or village walk in Spain or southern France … or anywhere hot I guess.
My header shot was taken in Málaga, and the others too showcase bougainvillea in Spain.
And as there is, after today, only one more day of Becky’s #SimplyRed squares, we might all need a spot of cheering up.
PS. These flowers are redder than they seem in a couple of these shots!
PPS. There’s a late addition to the clutch of stories addressing the issue of What if She says Yes? You can now read it at the end of Sunday’s post. And I recommend that you do!
The plain truth is that these days, in the UK at least, a phone box rarely has a phone within. They have become so iconic that many remain in situ. They’re often re-purposed as community book exchanges (Grrr. No photo!), or as a community planters – spotted in Bath with Becky herself, and Anabel, aka The Glasgow Gallivanter, who wants her own photo of it.
My featured photo is of the colourful (but poisonous) fly agaric. And as we all know, elves like to sit on them. I have no photos of elves, but I can do fairies.
I offer you a fairy collecting the secret wishes of children at Ripon Theatre Festival this year; another spotted on a fence; and a warning on a London front door.
Finally, here’s a genuine letter written by the tooth fairy who visits the children in our family when they lose their baby teeth. She’s a grumpy soul. She writes messages on tiny pieces of paper the size of a postage stamp and tucks them under the pillow as she leaves her silver coin. A Red Letter Day for the lucky recipient.
Last Saturday, I threw down a challenge, because Jude, featured below, was one of those who suggested it: to write a story, up to 100 words long, that addressed the question posed here:
Here’s mine: But hang on. Before you read Jude’s, or Dawn’s, or mine, make yourself comfortable on this bench. It is after all Sunday, and the day for Jude’s Bench Challenge.
What if she said ‘yes’?
Nell sat slumped against the stairs, leaning into the comfort of her neighbour. ‘He always drank too much, your dad.’ Her father lay twisted at the bottom—eyes open, unmoving. The investigators stepped gently round the body and its ooze of blood. ‘He fell’, Nell said. Only she knew about the bruises beneath her sweater, her sore and aching thighs. Only she knew whether what had happened just an hour ago was an accident or an escape. Only she knew what she’d say when at last they ask her: ‘Or …did you push him?’ What if she says ‘yes’?
PS. A late, great addition to the clutch of flash fiction, from Rebecca of Fake Flamenco:
What if She Says Yes?
When the wallpaper in the downstairs hall began to peel in the heat, I didn’t think it odd. Our house needs repair often after a century of Tiverstons. I bought a bottle of papering adhesive. As I sanded the wall before re-glueing, newsprint appeared in the lower corner. Using an exacto knife, I liberated the sheet. The headline about an Edna Swargle chilled my blood and I stopped breathing a moment. The woman in the photo looked just like mom as a teenager, but her name is Nancy. I walked upstairs where she was reading. “Mom, were you ever, Edna?”
The featured photo is not my own, but squared from an unattributed image found in Pexels, a great source of Royalty free images.
British readers will recognise the allusion to the Flanders and Swann ‘A Transport of Delight’, celebrating the good old London bus. These specimens aren’t from London, but to be found transporting visitors round the vast site which is the museum at Beamish. This is a marvellous place celebrating the day-to-day life of working men and women in the North East of England, mainly from 1900 to the 1950s, but with glances back to earlier times too.
By the way, this is the last day for sending your 100 word story: ‘But What if She Says Yes?’ suggested in my post last Saturday. Only two of you (well, three, counting me) have been brave enough so far.
Today, for one week only, I am abandoning my diary in favour of a piece I wrote just after I had left Thanjavur. I do sound a bit smug, I know. But I stand by every word I wrote then. My time in Thanjavur still stands as one of the highlights of my Indian journey. I’ve nearly used up any appropriate Thanjavur photos though. So there is just one shot today of a building I forgot to label at the time, a sad ruin of what it must have been, But red enough for #SimplyRed.
Couchsurfing
The following is an unsolicited testimonial for CouchSurfing. No money has changed hands in the production of this advert!
In case you don’t CouchSurfing is an online community in which travellers offer hospitality, and make use of hospitality offered while on the road. It’s based on the premise that this makes travelling more affordable, but more importantly, gives travellers the opportunity to experience the community they’re visiting at first hand, rather than in the somewhat detached way hotels and so forth can offer
That was a bit of a long lead in ….
In Thanjavur I stayed with Gwen, an American doing post-graduate research at the University there. We’d exchanged emails over a month or two, so she didn’t feel like a stranger when I met her. She gave me a wonderful welcome and time with her, so I wanted to treat her on our last evening together. She asked to eat at the best hotel in town, as she’s heard the food was good, and as a student of modest means, it was she thought, beyond her reach. Good idea.
A we passed through reception, we might as well have shown our passports. Thanjavur disappeared from sight to be replaced by marble walls and floors, corporate decoration, and uniformed staff of the kind that usually frequent these places. Where were we? Birmingham? Milan? Dubai? Mumbai? Who knows? And so into the restaurant, where we pulled our dupattas tight round our shoulders to combat the cold of the air conditioning. Consulted the menu (Indian, Chinese and European) and ordered our meal. Got talking to the English couple next to us as they finished their chicken and chips. They turned out to be on an organised tour, and it looked as though their time was spoken for. They were enjoying it, but were scurrying along at the pace set by the demands of the tour, with no opportunity to go off on any tangents, and certainly no opportunity to meet local people on their own territory.
Compare my time in Thanjavur with theirs. Gwen’s American, certainly, but she’s made it her business to be part of the community she lives in. She’s learnt fluent Tamil, so has good relationships with her neighbours. So while there, I had the chance to mooch round and enjoy with her the rangoli decorations and lights put out at night for a Hindu Festival of Light (not Diwali, yet another one). I met the neighbours and was invited into their homes. Narrowly avoided a big faux pas in one. Invited to sit down, I nearly plonked myself in the nearest vacant place on a sofa. Recovered myself in time and did not sit there, next to the husband, but squeezed onto the other sofa, with the women. Gwen said it would have seemed very odd to them if I hadn’t remembered in time. Chatted to another neighbour, a Christian, who explained that she liked to keep the Hindu festivals too, and showed us her Hindu decorations taking their place alongside her pictures of the Pope.
I ran errands for Gwen, and in that way had several language-less conversations in the food market, where everyone was keen to shake my hand, because tourists in Thanjavur don’t generally go and buy half a kilo of carrots.
We zipped round on her scooter and bought takeaways. We caught local buses together and visited temples. We had meals in local cafés. I wandered round her neighbourhood when she wasn’t there, and saw a small community going about its day-to-day business.
I was woken in the morning to local sounds (actually I was invariably awake anyway, I don’t do sleep in India); the Muslim Call to Prayer transmitted by loud microphone at, erm, 5.30 a.m. The church bells ringing a few minutes after that (20 % Muslim and Christian communities here). The street hawkers who kick in at about 6.45. The day-today noise which seems to begin so early in Indian communities.
And of course it was interesting to talk to Gwen, who knew exactly what I would be finding difficult, and could guess what assumptions I might be making. Gave me a quick Tamil lesson, and more importantly a gesture one (‘Yes’ and ‘No’ aren’t the same here, I learned rather late in the day). She’s much the same age as Tom and Ellie, but that didn’t seem to matter – it didn’t to me, anyway.
And I saved money, though that wasn’t my motivation. I tried to make sure I didn’t cost Gwen anything. So what did our new English acquaintances gain from their corporate type hotel? A thicker mattress maybe. Constant hot water possibly (doesn’t really happen in India). I’m willing to bet I had loads more fun. Oh, and by the way, the meal wasn’t that good, and cost exactly 9 times as much as the meal we’d had at lunch time in a local cafe.
My turn to host Leanne’s Monochrome Madness this week. I thought it would be fun to explore those shots which, by accident, design, or clever editing, are monochrome in any colour but black and white. Let’s go…
Winter scenes can often offer opportunities. The camera often seems to re-register those – to our eyes -crisp white snowy scenes to muted greens and blues.
Some years ago, this church in Bamberg took my eye, its doorway saints ravaged by the weather, and presenting to the world as olde-worlde sepia.
Sepia again. It was a sepia-ish sort of day when I spotted this young herring gull in Newcastle.
And this cherry blossom? I had an afternoon of blameless fun playing with the special effects on my camera.
One day – quite a few years ago now – my grandson and I enjoyed ourselves at the Horniman Museum, where a tent was in place bathing us in a range of different colours. Here William is in blue – and inevitably- red, because who knew that eventually, the shot would find its way into Becky’s Squares challenge #SimplyRed?
We’ll finish off in the natural world again.
I think this final shot just about squeezes under the wire as monochrome. What can you show us?
From Pyrenees to Pennines 
You must be logged in to post a comment.