Telephone

Well none of these is the photo I was looking for. But these I found whilst looking. And they are much better pictures than the one I was searching for.

Such is life.


South London



Central London


Grand Central Station, New York


New York Public Library


Family



a Theme Thursday post

art

The perils (joys? inconveniences? surprises? bizarreness... ) of living with a GCSE (grade 10/11) art student.

castles

I had such plans for this post! and so drastically ran out of time!

but here are some photos of the 2 castles on Jersey, Channel Islands.

Elizabeth Castle is just off the coast by the main town in the island. At low tide there is a causeway and the Castle can be reached on foot



to the right of this photo the "duck" - the amphibious craft which ferries to and fro - can be seen,



though there are local stories of people and vehicles being cut off by the tide and once, while M. had a summer job driving bread van, one of his colleagues hoped to make it home quickly and was caught out, leaving all manner of baked goods bobbing about on the waves for the sea gulls delight.

Elizabeth castle was used heavily by the Germans, during their occupation of the island in the 2nd world war. Hence the chimneys and not very castle-like roofs, though the castle was first built in the sixteenth century and Sir Walter Raleigh lived there for a while.

I've not been out to the island for quite a few years, hence no closer photos. I'll try and put that right next time I go.

In the meantime there are some good pics here and here and here.

Gorey Castle wasn't modified by the Germans to the same extent and its a much more medieval-looking castle - its older, built in the fourteenth century, originally known as Mont Orgeuil.










it even has stocks (not fourteenth century!)


and the seagulls are ubiquitous - looking out for baked goods no doubt.

oops

must remember to blog...





street art in Brighton, July 2009

time

Our clocks changed last night, so having slept till 8am (old "summer" time), I was then reminded of the time change and realised that it was now only 7am (new "winter" time).



I spoke to my sister this morning. She'd not been too impressed with waking at 5.30 am (new time) - far too early for a Sunday morning.

Well maybe that serves her right for being so organised as to change her clocks ahead of time and before going to bed.



I, on the other hand, was quite delighted to realise that my morning had an extra hour in it - it feels like an unexpected free gift.
Though maybe there will be a cost to pay later this evening....


Ah well, I guess I'll need to take my bike lights for cycling home from work tomorrow.

traffic

NYC cabs, August 2008



I'm boringly busy i'm afraid and hence not very sociable, blogwise.
I shall endeavour to do better soon.



Theme Thursday

Climate Change

Collected thoughts.




The Thames Flood Barrier is just down the road from where I live and I regularly cycle past it.

Its a constant reminder of the possible / probable consequences of global warming for London.



Last time I cycled past it the barrier was up for its regular testing. "Gates" slide up from the river bed between these "towers", forming a solid barrier - 30 metres tall at the highest point. It looked eerie and portentous - a wall across the river.

I can't help being glad that I live on the "right" side of the barrier, and also up a hill.



I'm not proud of that fact (the being glad, rather than living the right side....).

I found it sobering though not surprising that James Lovelock - one of the early prophets of the green movement - thinks that we have left it all too late.



I also sometimes wonder if our concern with ecology isn't ultimately self-centred and self-absorbed, another symptom of our anthropocentrism - we care about the consequences of our actions because they affect us not because they affect the earth. The earth will not be bothered if we expire from those consequences. The earth will adapt, and survive, and continue without us.

I enjoyed very much Margaret Atwood's book Oryx and Crake which presents some interesting projections about our use and abuse of science and the environment. Some of the ideas and images have stayed with me. I plan to read the "sequel" (-ish, not quite apparently) Year of the Flood.



A Theme Thursday post
also see Blog Action Day - Climate Change

I will be away this weekend and so it may take me a while to get around and visit your blogs... sorry, I'll try and catch up with you soon.

silent sunday

oops just realised I've already posted before the photo I put up this morning.

So here is a different one....






Fern in the Glasgow Botanic gardens.

Collection

Not so long ago I confessed my button habit - one of my favourite collections.


Another favourite is stones. I cannot CANNOT walk on a beach without picking up stones and I still have stones which I collected on family holidays as a teenager. I have a chunk of marble and pyrite which I remember picking up and carrying on a long hike up Ben Lomond and back down again, in Scotland ....
(sorry short of time, otherwise I'd post a photo of it, it is particularly beautiful)


Some of my stones lie in little places around the house


But most of them now have found a home in the garden



around my girl shed.


The granite stones with marble stripes and patterns mostly come from Jersey, the Channel Islands. Though some of the marbley ones come from childhood holidays in the Lake District. I could tell you which are which too.... Memory is bizarre sometimes.




The stones with holes in them come from beaches on the East and South Coast of England - especially Bexhill and Brighton.



The girl shed is looking a little autumnal and slightly neglected now and I've not seen any frogs in the frog pool for weeks.

But the stones will be there all winter, being lovely.




Theme Thursday - Collection

leaf love

I was working in the kitchen last week - loading or unloading the washing machine I think, its a constantly hungry beast - and with a little breeze, this came fluttering through the open door.

I think maybe someone I love was thinking of me.

Flight

Flight or falling? Whats the difference?




Neither is possible without letting go.



Coming or going?






Sometimes the only way to see the view is from the air.








And here are some other flying things.

Bats in the South of France - my friends house was right on their flight path.
I think my number one super-power of choice would be teleportation - but flight would come a close second.



Apologies to those of you who have seen this 2nd video before - though it was some time ago. The action starts just after half way through....



Starlings preparing to roost under Eastbourne pier.



a Theme Thursday post

right royal rant

I had such a nice post in mind for this lovely Sunday, but am too mad since reading about our less-than-beloved-by-many royal family in yesterday's newspaper.

These are among the richest people in the world.

They get paid an annual salary/allowance out of the taxes of ordinary people in the UK.

Over recent years that allowance (the "civil list") has been set at £7.9million per annum, on an assumption in the 1970s of an annual 7.5% inflation rate.

The 1970s deal also states that the civil list payment can never be reduced. (WTF??)

Even though inflation has been way lower than this for years now and even though our less than universally admired royals have been building up quite an unspent surplus in the fund.

The newspaper report I read cited an unspent £21 million surplus in the civil list at the moment.


This would be bad enough in times of economic equilibrium and stability.

In our current economic context, it is a right royal scandal.



And the worst of it? they are not asking just ("just") for continued contributions at the existing rate.

They are asking for a raise. You can read the full report here.


I am beyond mad and speechless.
I am more than just a little pissed off.


Thats all.

Wild

Logan, pretending to be wild.


When actually, he's really just pussycat.






A Thursday Theme.

Alice in the Channel Islands

Alice arrived in London from California, and almost immediately was on the move again.

The next stage of her journey began in a South London railway station, and ended in Jersey, the largest of the Channel Islands which lie between England and France.




Her adventures there are too numerous to chronicle here, but they included this visit to Gorey castle which made her feel even smaller than ever. She was not the only visitor to the castle, there were also some terrifyingly beautiful birds of prey which had her racing breathlessly back to the safety of her carriage.

She preferred the beach and the sea and gazed longingly at the surfers and wind-surfers and boaters splashing about.



The thought of sogginess kept her firmly on dry land. She'd had previous bad experiences with salty water.

Over the hill

both photos taken in Suffolk, England. March 2009



a Theme Thursday post

Unexpected

I did a bit of beach-combing on Friday - in Greenwich, London.

Here in fact:


photo from here, where there are some other great pictures of the Thames path.

I've heard tell there are fascinating historical finds to be made along the banks of the Thames, (and there was someone there with a metal detector) but despite working right there by the river, I've not found time - before Friday - to go down the steps from the Thames path by the Naval College which you can see in the picture, down onto the pebbles.

It was a thankfully-snatched lunch break in the midst of a gruellingly hectic day, and it did feel a bit like being by the sea... especially when a boat went by, making waves at the rivers edge. I closed my eyes and listened to the swell of the surf washing the edge of the riverbanks.

In places the banks of the Thames are more mud than anything, but by Greenwich there are lots of pebbles and flinty stones, even patches of sand - there were some shells, even riverglass though most of it wasn't caressed and washed smooth quite like seaglass. There were deformed and rusty chunks of metal and a lot of smooth strangely angled pieces which I think were bone.

My inability to leave a beach without one or two "combings" clearly extends to riverbanks as well - I did pick up and pocket a couple of things.


The heart of the larger stone is sparkly quartz.

I went back into the office with heavier pockets and a lighter heart.

rhythm

This post brought to you via Theme Thursday.

socks in Bexhill on sea

I guess he had cold toes....

Beginning

This Thursday's Theme did tax my brain a bit - but this is really a time of endings and beginnings for me, and for M, so I've been thinking in those terms about "beginning".

And so this picture - taken in East London's docklands, just across the Thames from where I live -



which is the ending of the day, but also the beginning of night.

There are all sorts of changes we're going through in my household and some of the endings are sad but many of them are positive - some also a relief. The beginnings are unpredictable - but then, thats life, isn't it? Its always unpredictable, even when we forget thats so.

There are always beginnings, at least potential beginnings, embedded in what we do from day to day, like secret seeds. Some of them might grow unseen into something lovely.

So my rather taxed brain thinks that beginnings often - normally? - include endings. But also that endings go with beginnings. "Segue into" beginnings. Segue is a good word.

I saw a conker today on the pavement. If you don't know what conkers are, click here for an old post I did about them. Way back when.... when I couldn't possibly have foreseen our current situation. A lot has ended and begun since then.

I was a little shocked to see that this conker was already ripe - like the elderberries I picked at the weekend. Autumn begins earlier these days than it used to, I'm not quite sure I'm ready for it.

But wearing cosy slippers again will be nice, theres nothing like a good pair of slippers, and open fires and that crisp chilly bright October air... Oh and autumn leaves....

And the seeds being shed now


will be there, dormant and waiting, ready for the beginning of Spring.



The cycle of life. Endings and beginnings. Commonplace and amazing, innit?



Oh, and as most of my work at the moment is to do with the beginning of our University term in 3 weeks time, eeek only 2 and a half weeks, I'm ultra-busy and apologise for not being "around" much in your comments at the moment. I hope to find more time soon...