aaah ! cool feet ! perks of the job

the mill at elstead on a perfect spring morning

wild flowers in the churchyard at east tisted in hampshire ( three miles west of selborne )

the view from the cab at the end of the road ... looking across from sandbanks towards the studland ferry and the purbeck hills

insomniac photography ... too tired to read, too excited by the evening's soccer ...

i burned the porridge ...

... whilst searching the internet for a video of lola flores

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8Sdjf4IzmU&mode=related&search=

ministry of agriculture food and fisheries in old scotland yard, whitehall ... again

easter sunday ... the bells of saint martin's in the fields were chiming in an expression of purest joy

ministry of agriculture food & fisheries ... carvings by james woodford

hop factors ... opposite the borough market

welsh congregational chapel in the borough, southwark, not far from quilp street

... not to mention marshalsea road, scenes of dickens' childhood miseries

insomniac photographer tiptoes to tripod

3bt

Yesterday morning, tiptoeing out to work at three forty-five, I forgot to take my camera. Naturally, I was assailed by beauty.

Driving west along the Chelsea embankment at six, in a clear still morning, the gold of the Battersea peace pagoda was reflected in a vertical yellow band upon the high surface of the smooth river, and beside it was the pale orange reflection of the setting moon, & as I drove further, so the two reflections gently swapped places as the moon's orange reflection, in pursuing me, overtook that of the pagoda.

Later, during a delivery in the precincts of the Chelsea football stadium, I found a long rough wall was being clad in a vinyl poster ... a massive team photo, the players at the centre, their bodies then repeatedly “photoshopped” ad infinitum to right and left, superimposed with the heads of hundreds of their supporters. In front of this larger than life-sized and perpetually silent audience, two coach loads of schoolchildren from France had just arrived, adolescent girls & boys, they had poured out of their confinement with a football & were playing their own beautiful impromptu game of soccer in the sunshine.

As I was going home on the bus, drained of energy after a difficult day, a lively teenage girl got on with a brand new push chair and a brand new baby. Sitting in the next seat, sharply profiled in the late low sunlight, she lifted him in her arms and kissed his tiny face, smaller than my fist, about twenty times, alternately on one cheek and then the other. He accepted the compliment with good grace.

whitehall 1212

legitimizing empire ... more imperialist clichés

male ? sphinx

royal tank regiment memorial

sometimes, if you twist the cap just so, you can make the bubbles hiss like receding waves

i dreamed about my parents ...

i think our dreams only take a few seconds to happen, even when they seem long & complicated

in this one, i was walking in a sunlit park with an unseen friend, besides a large level expanse of lawn backed by dark trees

i caught sight of my parents walking side-by-side across the grass & looking very happy & relaxed

surprisingly, they looked younger, perhaps in their early forties, and rather prosperous ... well-dressed & well groomed

and i said to my invisible friend something like ...

"i know they are only ghosts, but would you mind if we just stop and watch them until they fade away ?"

i'm rarther fond of signal boxes ... bollo lane junction & level crossing