one bt, although sometimes there isn't time to grab the camera ...

Last saturday, after sitting in an empty carriage for twenty minutes whilst my train was held at brockenhurst station, i went to the door just in time to see a huge steam locomotive drawing a long train of ancient carriages stained with years of use and filled with happy day trippers heading for corfe castle ... but there wasn't time to grab the camera

Six hours later, as i walked back from the hospice at christchurch to the station, i heard the same train thundering under the bridge, but just too far away for me to run with my camera ... so all i saw was the cloud of smoke, and all i smelled was soot and sulphur.

An hour and a half afterwards, as my train slid quietly through the darkness towards london, i caught a faint whiff of that sulphur and soot again, ... and a minute later we were gradually overtaking the dimly lit steam excursion carriages, so slowly that i could see the fabrics on the seats, the crisp linen tablecloths, the glinting brass table lamps ... and then the open plan carriages where old fashioned families sprawled amongst shopping bags, cast off coats, huddles of children ... and all so gradually that there was time for them to wave at me and for me to wave back.

http://www.swanagerailway.co.uk/news783.htm

a conspiracy of cats

read all about it ! read all about it ! mystery patient ( tina schol, the last time i set eyes on her ) wears no-longer-fashionable sweater knitted by photographer's mother ( sylvia forward ) twenty-five years ago whilst scrutinizing terry pratchett interview in today's guardian ... and she's only the very same person that slipped a copy of "mort" to me about twenty years ago

https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2011/oct/14/terry-pratchett-life-writing

ladybird metamorphosis on clapham common

last night the moon light crept into the quietest room, illuminating the dusty floor ... so naturally, my thoughts turned to dandruff

hey nonny no ! only five or six months 'til spring !

roelandt savery's dancing dodos

i don't really know if they danced but i like to think they'd have enlivened the grounds of many of our stately homes had mankind not been so unkind

here's an excellent history of the subject

http://julianhume.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/History-of-the-dodo-Hume.pdf

beware, slimmers ! ... this is an hornazo

baked by santi, the village baker of lagartera in toledo province ... a great man, and a self taught architect, too

eaten, ( probably mostly ), during this past weekend by my cruel friend linda, who must only have photographed it just to make me nostalgic ( i am not jealous, i am not salivating, do you hear me, linda ? )

if i remember rightly, it is a gigantic compartmentalized pasty containing localized fillings of mutton, of chorizo, and a boiled egg

at weekends we assiduously perfect the four R's ... by writing ...

... reading, and relinquishing all responsibilities

the colour purple ... delightful classical scholarship via metafilter

just click on this link for a short essay on antique perceptions by the late william harris

http://community.middlebury.edu/~harris/Classics/purple.html

he seems to have been a delightfully free thinker ... and doodler

http://community.middlebury.edu/~harris/ss/spot.html

in the past i've struggled and failed to paint with purple

here's an image borrowed from some clever young americans who don't have that problem

http://lotsoferaserdust.deviantart.com/art/Purple-Sea-172639231

enigmas on the way to work ...

http://www.electricsocial.com/

... and on the way home from work

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O_God,_Our_Help_in_Ages_Past

apropos de nuffinque

insomniac photography ( contd., )

ely

stuff at ely

inspired victorian medievalism at ely

shut that door !

he's just a big cry-baby