st.laurance's church, hawkhurst, kent

a curiosity ... all the church windows were blown out when a german flying bomb exploded in the churchyard in 1944 ... the restoration was celebrated in 1957 & so this church has a posh set of big nearly new windows, though i didn't find them attractive as the main theme seemed to be heraldic ... oh, the agonies of empire ... and the figures, which i haven't bothered to photograph, seemed to lack animation & emotion, neither of which any religion can really do without

 

mysterious heraldry at st. laurance's church, hawkhurst

the battersea elephant, again !

he's still there, or at least he was at about a quarter to four !

 

the battersea elephant, and again

the light was just a little better & the elephant was still there so i took some more pictures this afternoon

 

?animatronic? elephant

i couldn't get close but managed to get this view from the nearby railway bridge across four lanes of traffic

 

more battersea elephant stuff ..

if you blow this one up you can see some of the hydraulics behind his trunk

 

more battersea puppetry ...

this ?animatronic? girl must be about 25 feet tall

they were just dismantling her when i arrived at the roadside opposite the power station this afternoon

sorry the picture is fuzzy, it's only a little camera & she was about three hundred yards away


 

's'n'elephant!

 

in battersea, life is full of little surprises

 

battersea ? its a jungle out there !

 

our "local"

 

horse & hounds, at the top end of grovelye lane

the past is another country, they do things differently there

sussex violet

a month ago in la centenera in guadalajara, i met an old man with a cheeky grin, who walked in to a bar on a saturday afternoon chewing the stalk of a violet

i experimented with this one this morning, but it didn't taste of much

war memorial at burwash

i shall have to go back and take another picture

there is a brass plate in a kind of recess behind a little door on the south face

more names are remembered, including two brothers, lamplighters in the village for fifty years

 

in burwash, a very posh new window ...

designed by meg lawrence of kington, radnorshire

... on the north side at burwash church ...

 

... but who was C.S.W, d.1997 ?

"move him in to the sun ... "

much later, kipling wrote these few lines ...

A SON

My son was killed while laughing at some jest. I would I knew

What it was, and it might serve me in a time when jests are few.

no more cycling in the dark !

a glimmer of daylight over the river

i had to rest the camera on top of a lifebelt stand, it was the only flat surface around but of course it was tilted

 

s'pose issalright, if you like green!

 

7.15am on the river at putney

 

wick lane, bow ... due for demolition

 

traffic ... and joined-up thinking

i was reading the stickers in a queue of cars in bow, east london

fathers 4 justice have been in the news lately and one is tempted to sympathise distantly with anyone cut off from their offspring

however ... the other stickers are worth looking at

... what do the "bad boy club" and "bunny" stickers say ...

... about his suitability for the responsibilities of marriage & parenthood ?