Saturday, November 30, 2019

Doors, Entrances and Openings...

Salon-de-Provence
I have always loved doors, entrances and openings that make you wonder what lies beyond. Whether these are still in use, or weighed down with greenery that makes them useless, they always let you dream of what may be behind.

Old doorway from Reims
Ivy creates an evocative atmospere that always seems wisful - haunting even...

Hôtel du Vergeur - Reims
A door that is slightly ajar is even more tantalizing....  with the temptation to push through to the other side.

Canterbury
Intricate stonework can only add to the mood - especially arches in doorways...

Couvent des Cordeliers - Reims
Or in the cloister ruins of old edifices.... 

Gulval Church - Cornwall
In the porch of a Norman church...

Penzance - Cornwall
Or an odd granite alcove that by definition leads nowhere, except in our thoughts...

Aix-en-Provence
Others seem more promising - with a secret garden...

Mousehole - Cornwall
Entrances leading onto coastline courtyards...

Penzance
Modest and functional or rather more elegant...

Penzance
Or just plain impressive and a little austere...

Reims 
Beautiful Art Deco brickwork hinting back to past sophistication...

Reims
And a certain  regrettable neglect in the present...

Reims
Cobbled streets and alley-ways in old city centres in the winter months...

Laon
Or just radiant in the light of summer...
Chenay

Under the Ivy - Kate Bush



Calm White....


This has been a busy month, weighed down with many mundane, humdrum, mind-numbingly dull routine tasks and obligations. Business as usual, I suppose. Nevertheless, there were a few bright moments that lit up the past weeks - just no time to talk about those right now! So for calm of the spirit and comfort for the eyes - some beautiful petals and plant clusters that I loved from earlier months in order to mark the end of this one....
Each month has its beauty and charm - sunlight and warmth of the summer immediately win us over, but the winter has its own elegance and mystery - I'm now off to look at the fog that promises to veil the old town centre.


Obviously there are few flowering plants in the winter months, but the exception is the Hellebore with its modest head bent modestly downward, or otherwise raised defiantly!


Monday, November 11, 2019

Cascade of Poppies in Memory at Canterbury...


10,000 poppies were knitted or crocheted to create a blood-red cascade of colour that drape the walls in one of the passage-ways in Canterbury, so that people might stop and think of the thousands upon thousands of lives lost in the Great War. I do hope this is the case, but suspect many simply sweep past on their shopping quest, caught up in the flow of their material concerns, phones welded to their hands, much as myself this Saturday. However I did pause to think how strange it is that we unwittingly allow ourselves to be carried away by this frenzy of consumption - feeding our minds on the prospect of the latest fix, ever driven by this unsatiable thirst for easy entertainment and acquisition. In so doing, we no longer take stock of our lives, except to find it wanting in some respect, when we do in fact have so much to be grateful for.


                                      Aftermath - Siegfried Sassoon (1886-1967)

    Have you forgotten yet?...
    For the world's events have rumbled on since those gagged days,
    Like traffic checked a while at the crossing of city ways:
    And the haunted gap in your mind has filled with thoughts that flow
    Like clouds in the lit heavens of life; and you're a man reprieved to go,
    Taking your peaceful share of Time, with joy to spare.
    But the past is just the same—and War's a bloody game...
    Have you forgotten yet?...
    Look down, and swear by the slain of the War that you'll never forget.

    Do you remember the dark months you held the sector at Mametz—
    The nights you watched and wired and dug and piled sandbags on parapets?
    Do you remember the rats; and the stench
    Of corpses rotting in front of the front-line trench—
    And dawn coming, dirty-white, and chill with a hopeless rain?
    Do you ever stop and ask, 'Is it all going to happen again?'

    Do you remember that hour of din before the attack—
    And the anger, the blind compassion that seized and shook you then
    As you peered at the doomed and haggard faces of your men?
    Do you remember the stretcher-cases lurching back
    With dying eyes and lolling heads—those ashen-gray
    Masks of the lads who once were keen and kind and gay?

    Have you forgotten yet?...
    Look up, and swear by the slain of the war that you'll never forget!

    March 1919.