Including Music.

Everyone's Facebook pages (including mine) have pictures of snow today.  We didn't have any last year, and I do love to see it coming down, although I am not so keen on it lying in the streets for weeks on end.   

T and I haven't been out and about as much as usual, (although I've had some nice walks) because T. has managed to wrench his back. He's on the mend but he is being careful not to overdo things.   Actually I've enjoyed my own forays into the cold but colourful outdoors. A week or so ago I spotted these three fellas sitting on a dead tree, cawing in turn. 

Are they crows or ravens? I'm not enough of a birdwatcher to know - in fact, I think I did pretty well to spot them at all!   But I hope they are ravens, because I love the "Three Ravens" folksong, written down by (appropriately enough) Thomas Ravenscroft as long ago as 1611. This performance specially appeals to me, but the band, "Black Country Three" was active in the 1960s so I don't suppose I'll find any more of their singing.    

For birthdays and Christmas it's sometimes nice to have an outing - to a movie, a meal, a play, musical or opera or - well, anything really!    For Christmas I got tickets for  "Iolanthe" at the ENO.  It has only recently opened so we finally went and saw it the other day. I love Gilbert and Sullivan, although I know it's not for everyone. Gilbert's barbed wit of the 1880s often seems eerily topical even today, and Sullivan's music is so much fun. It's ironic really because apparently the poor man always yearned to be remembered as a serious religious composer, and not the entertaining guy who gave us this...

There have been four birthdays this month, two of them the twins -  I was pleased that my gift of a Spiderman umbrella went down well, as you see.  The party was fun but many of the guests were just as keen to play with the twins' toys.  That's one of the things I loved best at parties when I was little too - did you? 

I had a lovely surprise too. It arrived in the mail from Jeanie at  "The Marmelade Gypsy."  one of my favourite blogs. I was a prizewinner on her Blog Anniversary giveaway, and so a week or so a beautifully packaged item arrived in the post. 

Inside was a beautiful painting taken from a photo I posted from Miyajima island last year! 

It is nicely mounted in brown, and now I am on the lookout for a suitable frame.   Thank you so much Jeanie, it's lovely to have something so pretty and personal!  To me it makes the scene seem really magical in a way that a photo never could. 

The bulbs I planted last autumn have been coming up.  More crocuses - and my favourite variety, "Tricolour".  This was taken 3 days ago when the sun was shining and the bees were out, but I'm afraid the snow might have done for them now.  

I haven't been much at the computer - we've had workmen in and everything's very dusty so the best thing has been to sit in a nearby cafe and read a bit more than usual. I've just finished Edna O'Brien's "The Little Red Chairs" - a powerful, original and remarkable book, which I found extremely difficult to read at times.  It tells of what happens when an erudite and intriguing war criminal escapes to rural Ireland, and the village beauty, who longs for a baby, falls in love with him. 

If you think this sounds like a pleasing (though slightly challenging) read, you'd be wrong.   The relationship is glamorous and exciting in its way, and yet eventually we realise that the real story is  about different sorts of exile, and that some people are exiles from the human race.   

If I still wrote book reviews professionally, I'd have found it hard to produce an article about something as unusual and disturbing as "The Little Red Chairs."  Although it's so well written that I couldn't put it down, I began to feel in an odd way as if I was having to read it at gunpoint, unable to stop.  Alarming. Honestly.

If you'd like a proper review of it, click here and read what Julie Myerson wrote in "The Guardian."   

There's been quite a bit of music in this post, and so I should say that for the first time in all my years travelling on the London Underground, I saw a man busking with a didgeridoo.  It was a wonderful thing which appeared to be made out of a tree trunk.

I'd never thought I'd like didgeridoo music until I went to a concert by the virtuoso William Barton, and then I saw what this instrument can do. I was pleased to find a recording of him on Youtube so see if you agree with me that he is something special. 

At Last!

At last!!!  I have managed to change the colours on my blog to make it more readable.  Long story about a fault on Blogger - but anyway, I hope those of you who were dazzled by the previous lurid colour scheme find it easier now. 

Here in London our thoughts are with the victims of the Westminster attack, but London has survived so much over the years, and I do remember when life was overlaid with the constant threat of IRA bombs some years ago.  So things are carrying on exactly as usual, but I suppose the risk of trouble is always at the back of peoples' minds, as it is, sadly, in so many places in the world. 

  I've hardly been at the computer at all, so I am sorry that I've been remiss about responding to comments.  I do read and appreciate them very much, so I'll aim to do better in future.  I'm now posting more Japanese pictures, though, since there are still loads of things I would like to tell you about.   So here is something about Miyajima island, near Hiroshima. It's particularly famous for its large orange Torii gate which stands in the shallow sea just offshore.    

At low tide you can get very close to the gate as you see in the photos above and below.  It's exhilarating, if a bit soggy, to walk over the sands.  I noticed the old gent below walking out with his pet dog  - or at least, he was walking and the dog was sitting in its buggy.

This big torii gate marks the entrance to the Itsukushima Shinto shrine complex. ("Itsukushima" is another name for the island).  It is famous for several reasons, mainly that the main shrine as well as the torii seem to be rising from or floating on the water. And, as you see below, the general appearance of the place also reflects traditional Japanese ideas about landscape beauty, with sea, mountains and architecture in relation to each other.  It really is wonderful. 

The shrine's present design dates from the 12th century, even though it had been a holy place for six centuries before that. So pure was it that for many years no births and deaths were allowed to take place there.  (If someone died suddenly I suppose there would have been great consternation - nobody was able to tell me if this had ever happened though. I probably shouldn't have asked!)

  

The site is large so didn't seem crowded, and October weather in Hiroshima is generally good so the general atmosphere was peaceful and pleasant. It's a working shrine and ceremonies were going on in the normal way - in fact there were lots of monks around. Here's one explaining to some schoolgirls about this section of a huge and very old tree.   (T and I have been racking our brains to remember the exact significance of this gnarled and ancient slice of wood, so perhaps one Japanese speaking reader might click on the picture and enlarge it enough to read the notice on it?)

A couple of years ago I visited beautiful Nara park and admired the deer, so was charmed to find that semi wild deer roam the temple grounds here, too, and they are not backward in their search for food from tourists.  These people were having some trouble posing for their group photo while deer enthusiastically rummaged in their bags for food.

I like to look for little details, so this home made tableau caught my eye, arranged on a box in the street.  I wondered about the meaning (if any) of the pine cone in the foreground,which, as you see, has a long stalk balanced across it, with an acorn at each end.

High up on the hillside is Senjokaku hall, a monumental part of the shrine complex. It's as large as "1000 tatami mats"  (which are, I'm told 85.5 x 179 cm each - that's about 33.5 x 70.5 inches. Tatami mats are used in Japan as a way of indicating the size of a space).  Attached to the massive roof beams are votive paintings, and in the background you might spot huge rice spoons propped up on the floor, nearly twice the height of a man. They're called shamoji, they have some religious significance and are particularly associated with the island of Miyajima.

Similar flat rice spoons have become one of Miyajima's best selling souvenirs - needless to say the souvenir spoons are much smaller than the ones above.  Little cakes shaped like maple leaves are also widely sold on the island.... here's one which formed part of our picnic lunch, together with sandwiches beautifully packed by the friend we were staying with. (It looks so much more elegant than my rough old version of a picnic....)

Anyway,  Senjokaku has a fabulous view from all sides, as you see below. A quiet and peaceful place to sit and contemplate, with only the sound of birds to be heard and the sun coming in.

In this distant view you can see how large the hall is; it's just to the left of the pagoda.  

Despite the island's fame, the tourism isn't too high key, and we particularly enjoyed the town museum, which spreads over several rooms in an old house.  Of everything there, I was specially impressed by the prints on display. Japanese printmaking is most famous in the West for the work of a small handful of artists, of which Hiroshige and Hokusai are the best known. But in fact it is a huge art form with many celebrated artists and it's an absolute delight to look at the variety of it all. This woodcut in Miyajima museum appealed very much to me.  I recognised the shrine, but I didn't understand what was going on.  T is learning Japanese but his reading isn't up to deciphering the label. 

It looks immensely dramatic, anyhow.  

I'm looking forward to the Hokusai exhibition at the British Museum but how I wish there would be a more comprehensive exhibition of Japanese printmaking.  Like most Westerners, I had absolutely no idea of how wonderful it is.