Tag: Square Perspectives

Le Cami des Encantats Revisited

It’s that time of the month when I re-visit a blog post written during our years in France.  I’ve chosen this one because of the perspective it offers on rural life there,  a hundred or more years ago.  Because France – certainly where we were in the foothills of the Pyrenees – had no Industrial  Revolution, country life continued more or less unchanged for many until villages devastatingly lost their menfolk during the First World War.

Country life is country life, and some of these occupations would seem familiar to our own grandparents.  Others less so.  Have a look and see.

Le Cami des Encantats

July 26th 2012

Today we visited Benac, one of those  small and almost picture-postcard-pretty  villages outside Foix.  I think it’s unlikely that too many horny-handed sons and daughters of toil live there these days.  Too many freshly painted facades and cheery boxes of geraniums at the windows. Too many sleek and highly-polished cars.

But once upon a time it was a busy working community. For the last few years, every summer the villagers here and in nearby hamlets arrange carefully constructed and dressed figures into appropriate corners of both village and countryside.  These figures celebrate the way of life that persisted here – and throughout France – for centuries, and only died out some time after the First World War.  They call the route you follow to hunt out all these scenes Le Cami des Encantats: Occitan for something like ‘the Enchanted Path’.  Come with me and take a look. Click on any image for a closer look and a caption.

The priest arrives at church.
Un poilu – a WW1 soldier, the French answer to a Tommy.
Then as now, it’s good to sit and watch the world go by.
Here’s the Garde Champêtre, paid by local farmers to keep local crops and stock safely in one place.
Pudding basin haircuts weren’t just for English children.
A colporteur: a hawker, purveyor of books and other good things.
The beekeeper.
The mobile distillery or alambic came round every autumn to distill some of the fruit crops into potent alcohol. It still happens.
An important craftsman: the nailmaker.
This man’s work is indoors. He’s at the forge.
The miller.
Log sawing: always important in this wooded region, for building, fuel, joinery ….
Haymaking.
A woman at the village lavoir, or clothes washing place. Sinks are fed from a natural water source and sheltered by a roof. One of the centres of village life.
The French love to hunt. Then it was a necessity rather than a hobby.
The postman.
Le pelharot: the rag and bone man.
As in England, the pig played an important part in keeping the household nourished through the winter months.
L’estamarron: the tinker dips worn cutlery to bring it back to life
The church bellringer.
If you work in the fields all day you need water. This young woman brings it to you.
This shepherd will spend the whole summer at high mountain pasture with his sheep.
Preparing the soil for seed sowing.
She’ll sow the seeds.

Square Perspectives

Everything Points to the Cathedral

I’ve shown this image before, but it’s a textbook  demonstration of perspective – everything here leads your eye to the cathedral in Cádiz – so let’s give it another outing – squared up of course – for Day Ten of Square Perspectives.

Were we really only there in January?  It feels like another life, a different world.  And look at that clear, warm light!  Ah well …

Summer

Summer.

Fields of wheat and barley stretch endlessly beneath the bluest of skies.

Sutton Bank, Yorkshire.

And in late summer, harvest.

Sutton Bank, Yorkshire.

It’s the season for seascapes.

Filey, Yorkshire.

For exploring the beach.

Whitstable, Kent.

And for wonder, as one small person changes her ideas, moment by moment, about a day on the sands.

Zoë on the beach in Catalonia last year.

It’s the season for outdoor theatre.  Here’s the end of an evening in the Dales.  The unmissable Handlebards – all four of them – have just finished performing Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, with Wensleydale as their backdrop. This summer – no show.

Castle Bolton, Wensleydale, Yorkshire.

There’s entertainment in town too.  Impromptu sessions on the Regent’s Canal in London.

Word on the Water, Regent’s Canal, London.

Followed by a walk through an urban garden at Coal Drops Yard…

Gasholders, Coal Drops Yard, London.

…and, back at home, fields of poppies.

Poppies in West Tanfield, Yorkshire.

 

Summer, in its simplicity.

 

Lens Artists Challenge #104 Summer

Square Perspectives

Perspective in a Temple

We visited a dozen or more Buddhist temples when we were in South Korea a few years ago.  And every one had long lines of lanterns, stretching the length of a room or a verandah, hung with lanterns that were in their turn hung with prayer intentions.  A new perspective on mindfulness.

Bulguk-Sa, Gyeongju.

Square Perspectives

Out and About with my Virtual Box Brownie

Back in the Good Old Days, did you have a Box Brownie?  Do you remember hiding yourself in a darkened room to fiddle with the film, threading  the spool into your camera and winding it on, only to do the whole thing in reverse twelve shots later when you had to get the thing out to be developed at the chemist’s shop?  Do you remember spending your pocket money to have two whole films – that’s twenty four shots – to last you the whole holiday, and the frustrating wait of a week or so before your photos were developed?

Kodak Box Brownie much like mine (Wikimedia Commons)

Jude has asked us to remind ourselves of those days in this week’s Photo Challenge, by asking us to limit ourselves to twelve shots.  Jude however is profligate.  She’s allowing us to use all twelve shots in a single outing.  How improvident!  Even so, even with this quite generous allowance, I remembered the old anxieties.  Should I take this?  Would I regret it because there was something better round the corner?  What if I ran out of shots?

Here’s my offering.  A friend and I walked on Tuesday (socially distanced, of course) from Ripon to Bishop Monkton by the Ripon Canal, along some country lanes, then back to Ripon alongside the Rivers Ure and Skell. We enjoyed many quiet moments appreciating the waterscapes, the landscapes reached on foot from our starting point in the city centre.  Nine miles under our belts, renewed and refreshed.

As a homage to my Box Brownie Days, I’ll show you the photos first in monochrome, then in Glorious Technicolor.  It didn’t feel right to edit them in any way (apart from translating them into monochrome).

Most look neither better nor worse in my eyes in the two different formats – just different.  A couple don’t seem to work, and back in black-and-white days I probably wouldn’t have taken them.  Just one works better I think.    This journey into the past, thinking more carefully before pointing-and-clicking has been an illuminating and surprising pleasure which I’m sharing with Leya’s  Lens Artists Challenge. Click on any image to view full size.

This new perspective on photography would have been perfect for Becky’s Square Perspectives: but my pictures aren’t square.  I’ll choose one and square it up.  Maybe …. this one.

 

2020 Photo Challenge #26

Square Perspectives

Lens-Artists Photo Challenge #103

 

 

 

 

Along the Underpass

I like this dramatic pedestrian underpass Somewhere in London.  But where?  I’ve clean forgotten.  Canary Wharf area I think, on the DLR?  London friends, can you help ?*

Country Mouse would quite like to be in London again, just for a few days, for a different perspective on life.

  •  And lo!  Help has arrived from fellow -blogger John Hodgson.  It’s King’s Cross Station.  As I should have known, as I arrive here every time I come to the Big City.  Thank you John!

Square Perspectives