newdigate church

the design and quality of the lettering on this little brass memorial are exemplary and i am delighted and puzzled by the contradiction in the last sentence

it says "she died" ... "& expecteth a blessed resurection", implying perhaps, that she is only sleeping patiently in her grave

i wish it had told us more about the person

if she still loiters here then i doubt that she will be feeling patient ... the victorians restored the church in 1877 and any graves and memorials that might be her contemporaries have been tidied away for ever

looking west from ashdown forest

reigate tunnel and vaults

cap'n scott

a sunny afternoon in trafalgar square

rosy apples

the cats seem curiously unaffected by the prospect of my forthcoming journey to spain ...

unwashed etymological coinage

the goddess of small things has adopted an interloper

do you ever get that feeling that someone is watching you ?

it wasn't just the angel who made me shudder, it was the two green eyes in the shadow beneath the A40 fly-over on Edgware Road

after the visitors have gone

insomniac photography ... putting down the book to rearrange some familiar treasures

my mother used to have a birthday around this time of the year and, chance being a fine thing, i woke up around three and found this little thought in proust ...

"When we have passed a certain age, the soul of the child that we once were and the souls of the dead from whom we sprang come and shower upon us their riches and their spells, asking to be allowed to contribute to the new emotions which we feel and in which, erasing their former image, we recast them in an original creation. Thus my whole past from my earliest years, and, beyond these, the past of my parents and relations, blended with my impure love for Albertine the tender charm of an affection at once filial and maternal. We have to give hospitality at a certain stage in our lives, to all our relatives who have journeyed so far and gathered round us."

... so then it seemed appropriate to celebrate both proust and sylvia and, as it were, the crossing of their paths in the night ...

"the goddess of small things" has been at it again

one thing ...

... leads to another

five thirty in the morning and waiting to make the first drop

colour trajectory ... from wandsworth road at four a.m. ...

... to dorking vinyard at ten

a worm's eye-view of the stingers

from his kitchen sink insomniac phase ...