Dogs Etc.

Are you settling down to autumn?  I'm reluctant to, as I love spring and summer, but there's no doubt it's really on its way, with its seed heads and the the falling leaves. The rosebay willowherbs (those pink flowers in the picture below) are just about over, but at least it's still warm enough to sit outside in the sun.  I haven't had much time for blogging lately but I've taken every chance to keep in touch with nature, and I've seen some strange things.  Like, the other day I was on Hampstead Heath (below) picking blackberries, when I kept hearing bangs.



I looked around and eventually saw this - a woman throwing balloons into the air.



Her very clever dog was chasing the balloons and heading them onwards



but every now and then he got too excited, took a snap at the balloon and - bang!



I spoke to her just as she was packing the balloons away, to her dog's disappointment.She explained that he gets so excited that she has to give him a break - so now, they were off for a nice, quiet walk!

I am not sure you can call stuffed animals "nature".  In fact, they're almost the opposite. I saw lots of them, though, when a historical society I belong to made a trip to Quex Park, in Kent. The house belonged to a Major Percy Horace Gordon Powell-Cotton, who was obsessed with hunting, and, like many dedicated hunters, was also very interested in the animals he shot. I never understand why someone who loves animals would want to spend their life shooting them, but there we are. And he did want to share his fascination with the folks back home. The specimens are beautifully stuffed and set against carefully researched and painted backgrounds and if you like that kind of thing they are really wonderful examples. More information on their website, here.

In his travels to exotic locations, the Major had really quite "Boys Own" type adventures and barely escaped alive at times from tribesmen - in whom he was also very interested.  (To be fair, he wasn't also trying to kill them, like the animals - but they certainly tried to kill him, on occasion.)

So the museum also contains all kinds of ethnographical curiosities, and altogether it is a very interesting period piece. The gallery shown below not only displays lots of antlers and dismayingly large numbers of elephant tusks, but there are also native spears arranged on the ceilings, and glass cases of objects reflecting a way of life which has almost entirely vanished - certainly for Westerners who travel abroad.

T6his particular room was used as a ward for convalescent soldiers during the First World War.  Imagine recovering in here!  Through the archway you can see a lion and its prey, although to be fair I imagine all the floor space in those days was given over to soldiers' beds.

Two of the Major's daughters shared his passion for faraway places. Both were highly intelligent women, and they devoted their lives to doing medical work among Africans. They also catalogued and recorded the way of life of their patients, (who were also their friends) so that now we know what they made and did and looked like.

There really is some splendid stuff to see - I particularly loved this bowl with six heads from Nigeria. 

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In search of a bit of my own history I have been sorting out some old albums passed down in my family.  For a hundred and fifty years, one branch of the family worked to bring the wonders of the electric telegraph to far flung places ranging from Afghanistan to Pakistan, and their families followed along - only a minority of my grandparents and great-grandparents were born in Britain, and neither of my parents were.

Some of the albums are very interesting.  Here is HMS Renown - the original battleship, built in 1895, pre-dreadnought.  She was scrapped in 1914. My relatives were pretty bad at labelling things but I'd guess this was probably somewhere in the Indian Ocean.

Here is a snap with the following title.  It looks like "Becalmed Boat in Mediterranean"....but I think that must be wrong...

because no way is this the Mediterranean, surely. Anyone got any ideas? The robe looks a bit Turkish to me.

And a more homely note, here is "Tinker on the Horse" was taken in a farm that was very likely at in Tolleshunt Major,  Essex, about 1920.

I'm still wondering what this picture represents. It dates from around 1910, and seems to show women from all nations.  But which nations? The one in the centre could be Marianne of France. I don't think she is Britannia because she doesn't have a Union Jack.

The girl in tartan must be Scotland. I see a pre-war Japanese flag and a lady who might be dressed in a kimono.  Perhaps an Afghan lady in the centre.  An Indian, and a Russian in that white hat, do you think?



As for the event itself, goodness knows what it can have been.

I also visited the area where my parents spent most of their retirement, in West Berkshire/East Wiltshire.  The weather, as you can see, didn't really cooperate but I enjoyed the trip, anyway.  The photo is taken from the steps of the antique arcade in the centre of Hungerford.

While I was in the arcade I bought someone else's family photos, an album dating from the early 1940s.  I don't usually buy other peoples' family photos, but this album, although damaged, wasn't that expensive, and it was so carefully laid out,  with photos that were worth seeing. The owner listed all the places where he had served with the Army. 

 There is no name on the album, and I was rather sad to think that there were no descendants who wanted to keep it, because he was a good photographer.  I liked the way that the camels and people in the foreground here seem to be making no effort to escape what I suppose is a sandstorm approaching in (according to the caption) Khartoum.  Looks mighty scary - have any of you ever been in a sandstorm? I wonder how quickly it would typically move.  Do you think this was about a minute away, or half an hour away?  

Here is an air raid over Alexandria, Egypt, with searchlights criss crossing the sky. Or could it be a time exposure of tracer bullets?  

 Alexandria is where my father grew up.  I didn't notice Dad in any of the photos though!

And here are a couple of our anonymous soldier's colleagues at El Alamein, in the Western Desert.

I don't think I would have liked living then at all, but looking at this album I do sense that this owner felt a certain wonder that he had gone to so many places and seen so many things. The final picture in the album shows troops marching in a VE Sunday parade through the streets of Melton Mowbray, photographed by Heawood, a local photographer.   I wonder if the soldier did anything interesting with the rest of his life, and whether he was glad to back home in Leicestershire.  

My cousin lives near Melton and drove down to see us in London last weekend. I don't know why it always seems like the ends of the earth to me to go to where they live from here. It's actually only about two hours in the car.  I was glad she came though as they've just got what must be the nicest dog in the world.  He's a bit of a crossbreed I think, mainly a Pom.  Such a good tempered, friendly and altogether delightful dog.   He loves having his tummy stroked. 

He seems to have a lot of cats in his life, which he is on the whole pretty good friends with.  But then he seems to be friends with everyone.  Definitely my No. 1 dog of the year!

We stayed in a friend's cottage in East Anglia, and I was impressed by a couple of cars I spotted in Raveningham, Norfolk. The one on the left is surely a hearse, but its front seats are upholstered in gold, so there is obviously a story attached.   Both were looking a little dusty, as if they hadn't been driven recently. I don't suppose their original owners ever thought they'd end up in the depths of the Engish countryside.

I plan to visit everyone's blogs over the next few days, I am sorry for my absence and lack of comments. I seem to have a lot of work to do at the moment.  It all seems to be to do with art, so I hope I'll have a lot to tell you about it in due course.   One thing is sure at the moment though - and that is that I certainly have a lot to learn!

Spring is Here!

Why haven't I been blogging in the last month or so? I think it's because I've been enjoying the outdoors as much as I can - this is my favourite time of year.    Here are a few snapshots of what I've been up to while getting out and about.

Everyone has been posting photos of bluebells this year, it must be a good year for them. Mine was taken in beechwoods near Henley on Thames, Oxfordshire. Got up very early and so those long shadows are early ones.  It was wonderful to be out at the start of a promising new day.

We had the chance to stay at a friend's cottage in Suffolk for a week, and collected stones on the beach at Dunwich.  The stones on the shore are always interesting and I have collected a few eye catching ones in my time. I live in hope of finding one whose markings look exactly like Elvis's face, so I can sell it for a fortune on eBay.



Dunwich is very interesting because most of it has been swallowed up by the sea.  If you ever go, there is a first rate little museum which gives the curious history of the place.   Here's a picture of what it used to look like.   At the bottom is an aerial view of Dunwich today. Above that is the beach, and above that is medieval Dunwich, before it was consumed  I suspect that some of the stones we now find on the beach are originally part of medieval houses, worn into smoothness by the sea.

Just across the border in Norfolk I came across one of the fascinating stained glass windows I ever saw, made of fragments of glass of different ages and styles.  Assembling the glass was a kind of hobby for the original owner, an eighteenth century archdeacon, and the result is in the local church.. Here is just a part of the window, and if you can enlarge you'll see the detail. If you are a glass buff,  you might notice just from the look of it that some of the class is many centuries old.



Back in London a beautiful cycle ride through Hyde Park took us to the V & A Museum. They're having an Art and Engineering season,  and this surprisingly beautiful canopy was in fact created entirely by a robot, which is stored in the plastic enclosure in the centre. The project is called the Elytra Filament Pavilion, and you can see the robot building more filaments on 17th and 18th June - just check out the V & A's website.



We also saw their show about Botticelli, which had some arresting images, particularly those by Andy Warhol.  You can see one in the background of the picture below, with a dress fabric in the foreground and an Asian style Venus further away.

Thankfully it is now nice weather for cycling, so we headed along the Grand Union Canal and saw this house extension (below). I love the idea of a glass extension, but everyone passing on the towpath could see everything inside, except in the rooms where the owner had completely pulled down the blinds.  I was tempted to take a closer picture, actually, but didn't because he was sitting at his desk, looking out of the window right at me..  A charming location, though.



A little further along the canal I spotted some horses drinking, I thought what a peaceful scene it was, the like of which you could probably have seen centuries ago.



Always fun looking at the residential canal boats, which are often occupied by individualists, artists and craftsmen..  How is this for a guard dog? Although actually it looks quite friendly to me.



I had a lovely birthday picnic

But we lost our teapot when someone decided to see what happens when you throw teapots over the edge of the balcony. 

Out and about in London, I passed a shiny golden Maserati parked in the street.  What I specially like are the L plates. When the kid has passed his driving test in this old thing, he can graduate to something more expensive, I suppose.....

 I even went to the theatre. We're lucky to have the Tricycle Theatre near us in Kilburn.  Although it is only small it punches way above its weight and I've seen so many good plays there.  The current one is called "The Invisible Hand" which at first I thought sounded like a Sherlock Holmes story, full of London fogs and middle class Victorians.  It couldn't have been more different. It was an astonishingly gripping and well acted look at how a talented banker held hostage by Pakistani militants offers to invest his way to amassing a $10 million ransom.  You could watch the play on several levels.  It was extremely gripping, and I had no idea how it would work out, but it was full of twists, turns and shocks, and ended up making me think very hard.   The play's writer, Ayad Akhtar, has won a Pulitzer Prize and you can see why. 

At home, I have spent too much time obsessing about the Brexit debate. This will probably be of most interest to UK readers, although Americans (and the rest of us) also have to think about the big political decisions in the US before too many months have passed.  Recently many countries have swung to what would once have been seen as extreme views. I've found this disturbing, and I think it is dangerous, so I've been wondering why. 

I'll spare you my thoughts on this, though, and instead will finish this post with a hopeful picture. 

 Yes! I found the end of the rainbow! Please keep your fingers crossed that a pot of gold will now appear in my life  - in fact, if the picture is correct, there might be two pots of gold.    If it does, I'll share it with everyone who has commented on my posts so far this year.  Maybe it's a sign I should go and buy a lottery ticket.....  

Signs

I'm stuck in my office most of this week, but thought you'd like to see some photos from a couple of weeks ago when T and I took a cycle ride along the Norfolk-Suffolk border.

One of the nicest things about England is how you need only go a mile or two, slowly, on foot or by bike, before you see something interesting. Throughout the day I was struck by the number of signs and notices that caught my eye.

First, a rather sad one. NO LEAD, ZINC ROOF, NO VALUE. The hand written sign outside this church refers to the tremendous bout of metal thieving at the moment. War memorials, electrical cables, church roofs - it's appalling, dangerous and disrespectful. I am not convinced by the government's reasons for its lack of action. Read more here, if you are interested.

The weather wasn't great, and I quickly regretted coming out without warm socks. In the small town of Bungay I spotted the hand-written signboard of Wightmans, the sort of old fashioned house and home store that I didn't think existed any more - the kind of incredibly useful shop that sells most things.

Some of the furnishings look to be 60 or 70 years old, and when I went in, several assistants were sitting in a row behind a counter, drinking tea. They were extremely helpful. And yes, they had the perfect socks!

Later that day, we found ourselves passing the somewhat eccentric Raveningham Centre, a converted old farm on a large country estate. This tin sign of a pub scene is one of many curious objects adorning their cafe, the "Ravenous Cafe."

"Woodbines" were renowned in my schooldays as ultra-cheap cigarettes that even children could afford. (Hm.)

The Raveningham Centre (check the link for their website) is a bit of a hippie throwback. It's centred on an ancient, farmhouse doing dual service as a ramshackle family home and home for antique rugs and various curiosities. There are vintage clothes in the outbuildings, and the funky, quirky cafe-shop-event space sells great cakes, freshest salad, and, of course, vintage signs.

I usually like visiting village churches. Many are hundreds of years old, and guard much of the history of the settlement in which they stand. Even if the villagers are not particularly religious, they usually treasure their church, as the village's special building.

Here, in the small village of Toft Monks, a large Royal Coat of Arms of George II (1683-1760)hangs above the main door. After 1660 it was compulsory to have coats of arms (known as "achievements") hung in churches, but over the years most of them have disappeared or been chucked out by modernizers. I love the lion's expression in this one. It's meant to be growling fiercely but it looks rather cute to me.

I'm sorry it's a bit dark.

A little further on, in the large church at Aldeby, this message is proudly scratched upon an inside wall

"THIS STEPLL WAS BELT 1633" Not the best spelling, but the steeple-builders of 1633 must have been glad to finish their task.

Just across the road, someone was selling home made marmalade, apples (in the carrier) and eggs. You put your money in the honesty jar. Just one goose egg was left, looking quite majestic alongside the recycled box containing free range hen eggs.

I bought the apples, which had been well stored, and I made a crumble with them next day - they were very good.

Most East Anglian villages have signs which show notable things about the village. This sign serves both Wheatacre and Burgh St. Peter, and includes portraits of a windmill, an East Anglian sailing barge, a Suffolk Punch horse and a very strange looking church.

The church was just across the fields. It looked odd in real life, too, with a ziggarat shaped tower and a beautifully thatched nave.

The weird tower is actually a mausoleum built by one Samuel Boycott, a big shot around Burgh St Peter in the late 1700s. Boycott decided to repair the tower and make it double as a mausoleum, and his design was supposedly inspired by an Italian church, but the church guide compares it to a structure of ancient Iraq. Either way, the local people probably weren't too impressed, but in those days the local gentry were not to be argued with so they had to put up with it.

I suspect the blanked out window is where they put the coffins.

Large slabs of stone standing upright next to a road can be milestones, or perhaps old prehistoric standing stone re-used by a local farmer. We saw several that were inscribed with runes. In each case, the incised lines of the runes had been painted red. There was no other explanation, but I assumed the stones were part of an art work. Flickr has some photos of "The Stones of Destiny" here so see what you think.

And then we came across a very large and obviously very old ruined castle. It was very picturesque, with sheep grazing around it, it was hard to get a good picture because it was all fenced off. This was where we really did need a sign. But there wasn't one!

Just a rusty old gate.

The trusty O.S. map identified the site as Mettingham Castle, so I looked it up when I got back, here. As you see, lots of public money has gone on conserving the ruins. Here's hoping that one day they will be open to the public.

By this time the weather had warmed up so we returned to Bungay and bought some goodies from the deli to eat as a picnic in Bungay's fine ruined castle, which is tucked away behind the town. I'm afraid I forgot to take a picture of the deli sign - but the food was great, and we felt we'd had a good day.

Nice Things

I feel in the mood for something entertaining today, so I rummaged through my picture file and found some nice things from interesting places that I feel happy to look at. Hope some of them will cheer you up too!

A photographer colleague, Jeremy Hoare (checkout his lovely pics here) is convinced that the future of travel "writing" is largely visual and cinematic. He uses this little movie as evidence, and I almost think he might be right. It's called The City of Samba from Jarbas Agnelli on Vimeo. This filming technique is known as tilt head video, featuring close focus and quick or slow motion, giving the impression that human life is really a video animation. I love it.

Now some of my own photos. Below, a ceiling in a mansion in Trieste. I'd like one like this. It wouldn't go with my furniture, but I'd still like it. I mean, imagine that above your head.

Below, this rather surreal picture shows a steam train chugging out of a wood in Norfolk. But it's real. The place is Bressingham Steam and Gardens, and I recommend a visit if you like acres of beautiful gardens, or steam vehicles, or both (as I do).

My friend E's adorable dog in New York. All the time E was home, Maizy would run around full of beans and happiness. The minute E went out of the apartment, the light would go out of Maizy's life. She'd lie around with her feet up on the wall, just.... waiting.....

She really cracked me up, it makes me smile every time I look at this photo.

Since I had the Greek Santorini photos out, here's another (true colour) which shows the volcanic island of Santorini from an island in the caldera of the extinct volcano. At least I thought it was extinct but apparently it isn't. The ground was pretty hot and steamy, come to think of it.

Ah! twin babies! (not really) in the backpack ready to go!

Here's a photo of what I would MUCH PREFER to be doing today. I spotted this guy last month in Malaga, Spain.

Actually what I have to do today is organise permissions for the Japanese translation of my Lewis Carroll biography, research a proposal, and wade through a load of unutterably tedious legal stuff that just goes round and round in a crazy way till I feel like Alice, shouting "You're nothing but a pack of cards!"