i'd cycled past the masons arms twice a day for nearly a year before i looked up at the old-fashioned sign & the medieval looking statue

One of my favourites ... by Siegfried Sassoon, yer actual Officer and Gentleman

DECEMBER STILLNESS


December stillness, teach me through your trees

That loom along the west, one with the land,

The veiled evangel of your mysteries.


While nightfall, sad and spacious, on the down

Deepens, and dusk imbues me where I stand,

With grave diminishings of green and brown,

Speak roofless Nature, your instinctive words;

And let me learn your secret from the sky,

Following a flock of steadfast journeying birds

In lone remote migration beating by.


December stillness, crossed by twilight roads,

Teach me to travel far and bear my loads.

a misty pond above bodiam

 

sunlight and frost at newhaven fort

 

a fisherman going out from newhaven this morning

 

stroll on ...

 

typically worthing ... the pier offers new amusements rather than thrills

 

flying the black flag on worthing beach this morning

 

hmmm! i wonder if a fortune teller would dare to read the soles of my feet ?

 

clockwise from the left, house key, bike key, work phone, own phone ...

 

i'll be returning to this subject occasionally until i can "nail" this chandelier ... you can click on the picture to enlarge it ... TWICE !

still among my favourite london buildings, battersea peace pagoda ...

 

... i wish i could offer you a translation of the texts ...

... however, i wouldn't want to stand under this in a thunderstorm

a last glimpse as the ferry from newhaven to dieppe exits stage left beyond cuckmere haven

 

ponies at frog firle near alfriston

 

saint andrews church at bishopstone near seaford, almost too tidily restored ...

 

... with twelfth century corbels ...

 

... and bishopstone bird life, jackdaws and weather cock

 

you couldn't make it up ...

i drove past a bus queue on this freezing morning

six of the seven looked rigid and miserable

the seventh was a stout party, about eighteen stone, with a wide and guileless face, dressed in the kind of charity shop clothes from long passed decades that a caring institution might provide

he stood with feet wide apart and bounced up and down, his head thrown back, his right hand using a half-eaten apple as a plectrum for his air guitar