Friday, September 23, 2011

3BT 23rd September 2011

When the morning sun is low and dazzlingly yellow, the road sweeps gently up and around a low hill, passing a mature oak tree in dark full leaf.  At the same time the mist from the wide valley beyond has flowed up and over the tree like a low wave.  As the truck speeds past the tree, and the sun appears to race past it on the other side, so tiny sunbeams emerge through the foliage into the mist as bars of light and do so in a very interesting way.  The perspective of diminishing parallel lines means that each is perceived as a long wedge of golden mist, disappearing into a needle point towards the glowing heart of the tree.  Each beam fades in and out of vision as we pass and the overall effect is illusory, that they form the offset spokes of a turning wheel that has no outer edge.

High above industrial Brixton, I spy an unfamiliar movement and focus on a small pale hawk being circled and harassed by some kind of crow that is twice as big.  They move higher and higher as the crow repeatedly tries to strike the hawk.  When they have almost disappeared into the midday brightness the hawk turns away in a long dive, gathering speed all the time but, to my surprise, the crow keeps right behind him until they disappear from view behind a neighbouring factory.

Having skipped on to an empty bus at four in the morning to go to work, I eventually drag my stressed and exhausted self on to another at five thirty during the journey home.  Miraculously, in the middle of a very busy rush hour, on this very crowded bus, the seat nearest to the door is vacant !  Phew !

Wednesday, September 21, 2011

colin busby forward


















my dad died ten years ago today

he was very fond of village pantomimes

i imagine there will be pantos all year round in his part of heaven

Monday, September 19, 2011

why waste these thousands of berries from the yew hedge at audley end ? ... i'm sure they'd make a delicious pink gin

more stuff from southwold



success won't turn her head

1830-ish cast iron at Yoxford

i say ! isn't that a mini ha-ha ?

damn ! ... neither for sale nor in my possession




the bronte sisters' naughty cousins are doing it for themselves
























http://www.craggsisters.co.uk/

more alderburghian architectural gems



immaculate angels in dedham church


sentimental doggy tosh in aldeburgh


by the door in blythburgh churchyard

















surely by the same artist ... i like the way the cherubs' heads incline to one another across that little gap and across all those years

and i like to think that someone like thomas hardy might have filled that little gap with a thousand pages

fresh air ... i must remember to clear the fish and chip wrappers and the salt and vinegar from the bedside table before the loved one gets home from her evening class

at the door of the fry gallery ... lovely place, lovely people .... in saffron walden

Sunday, September 18, 2011

Monday, September 12, 2011

aunt mavis, aged 96 and a half

















...reminding me of that Thomas Hardy poem, Heredity


I am the family face; 
Flesh perishes, I live on, 
Projecting trait and trace 
Through time to times anon, 
And leaping from place to place 
Over oblivion. 

The years-heired feature that can 
In curve and voice and eye 
Despise the human span 
Of durance -- that is I; 
The eternal thing in man, 
That heeds no call to die