... on a freezing foggy morning at brightling

 

some very pretty numerals above the porch at brightling church

 

memorial to jack fuller in brightling church

click on the picture once, and then a second time when the enlarging icon eventually appears in the bottom right corner, and you'll be able to read the text

castings in the porch at brightling church

 

brightling village post office ... once upon a time

i love the cuttters' marks on the masonry


 

pussy cat, pussy cat, where have you been ?

years of searching for driftwood and oddities amongst the pebbles on brighton beach have sharpened my eyes and so i nearly fell off my bike to avoid running over this little pussy cat ... she's about 35mm x 25mm ... she's lost a couple of stones but how she escaped being crushed on one of london's busy arterial roads is a mystery

 

my client will plead temporary insanity, m'lud

in the first hour of daylight, when the conscience and all aesthetic sensibilities are weakest, i murmured to the loved one, semi-dormant upon the adjacent pillow,

"if i bought you a carrier bag or two of new plasticene, you could make a life sized bust of me, brightly coloured !"

adding after insufficient consideration,

"... or marzipan !"

after a significant silence, somehow the conversation cum monologue turned to the absence of a chamberpot in our tiny residence, and whether we might have,

"wedgewood, or waterford crystal ?"

now i have two headaches

 

mud, glorious mud !

 

cognitive dissonance and incipient aphasia ?

I had a little trouble with the quick crossword in the Guardian this morning.

The clue was "Landlocked anchorage in the Orkney Islands (5,4)".

The words that stuck in my head for two whole minutes were Sullom Voe.

The correct answer was, lurking behind the wrong one, and on the wrong island, Scapa Flow.

Then, on my way home along the river bank, I stopped to admire some Thames mud and only half-remembered Flanders & Swann's song, "Mud, Glorious Mud!", unable to complete the tune in my head because it had temporarily fused itself together with the tune and words of "Food, Glorious Food!" by Lionel Bart.

As the old used to tell me in Wiltshire when I was a boy, "Old age doesn't come alone."

salvaging a sunken boat on the thames at putney

 

i think i'll renounce truck driving for religion ...

the loved one brought this picture from the wallace collection for me

it shows saint hilarion, the leader of a bunch of palestinian reclusives, resisting temptation

i've just been reading up on his life but can't find a clear description of this particular episode though many travelled to visit the recluse in his cave

am i to assume it is allegorical ?

can any one supply some dialogue ?


 

alarming !!!

walked in to the kitchen at beautiful old ockenden manor to be confronted by nurielle in her immaculate white pinafore brandishing the biggest pointy stainless kitchen knife in the world in her right hand, and warming it up with a full-on roaring blue-flamed blow torch in her left ... all part of her benign confectionary technology and not the premature vasectomy kit i was fearing ... but she's a proud artist and refuses to be photographed ... so far

lively farm sign near forest row

i've only just noticed this jolly sign, though i've probably driven past it a zillion times

perhaps it is newly revealed since the undergrowth was cut back

hugh thompson

can i commend to you this obituary of a real hero ?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,3858,5371551-103684,00.html

... safely grounded at battersea heliport

 

late arrivals dropping in at battersea heliport

 

i imagine the birds get pretty desperate at this time of the year

 

welding team repairing battersea bridge

 

battersea bridge under repair, the barge is servicing a gantry beneath the arch