FGM...

I’ve written in the book about FGM (female genital mutilation). Though the custom predates Islam by centuries, today it is found only within, and adjacent to, Muslim communities. Despite what a handful of apologists say, there are no health benefits to FGM, but a host of problems, both physical and psychological. FGM is typically inflicted on girls at an age when they are too young to offer informed consent, or to fully understand what is being done to them.

The procedure, which is believed to have affected about 170,000 women and girls currently living in Britain, has been a criminal offence since 1985 (it also became illegal, in 2003, for UK nationals or permanent UK residents to take their child abroad to be ‘cut’). However, it wasn’t until 2013 that the first prosecution was brought. The police and social services have often been reluctant to prosecute people for what they see as religiously mandated customs. I read on the Guardian website today that the number of girls in England who have experienced or are believed to be at risk of female genital mutilation (FGM) has more than doubled in a year, according to assessments by council social workers. What a depressing statistic.

The statue of King William III, in Petersfield, Hants...

Writing...

Since I’ve been writing the book, I’ve had a change of heart and mind. Not just about religion, which now bothers me much more than it used to, and in so many different ways. It seems I’ve also stopped thinking about my destination as a place. For the first time in my life there’s a subject that really engages me as a writer. As I’m coming to the end of this book, and look forward to the next part of the process, I’m thinking about what to write next. Something that isn’t 130,000 words long, that’s for sure. It almost doesn’t matter where I am. I enjoy good conversation, about things that matter, and, conveniently, the ‘conversation’ can continue when I’m on my own: the interplay between what I’m thinking and what I’m able to get down in written form. I’m hoping it will help to keep the mind active for a few years yet.

Yateley Common, Hampshire, looking rather painterly...

Crying wolf...

It was interesting, this morning, to see how people reacted when the fire alarm went off in the library. Instead of rushing for the door, they just covered their ears and grimaced. We’re so accustomed to hearing alarms going off that we no longer associate them with danger, but just inconvenience.

Adjacent betting shops in Boston, Lincs: licensed today...

Missionary position...

Christian missionary, John Allen Chau, tried to “declare Jesus” to the tribespeople of North Sentinel Island in the Indian Ocean: a virtually ‘uncontacted’ tribe thought to be at least 30,000 years old and known to aggressively resist outsiders. In a letter to his parents, Chau wrote “You guys might think I’m crazy in all this, but I think it’s worth it to declare Jesus to these people”. He went ashore, with only a Bible and some gifts; predictably, the tribesmen, armed with bows and arrows, killed him.

Though I can’t summon up much compassion for the guy, who just sounds like an idiot, the episode reminds me of an anecdote, quoted by Annie Dillard, in her book Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. An Inuit hunter asked the local missionary priest: “If I did not know about God and sin, would I go to hell?” “No,” said the priest, “not if you didn't know.” “Then why," said the Inuit, "did you tell me?”

Artwork framing the landscape, on Holme Moss, West Yorkshire. Engraved on the frame: "Many people look, but only a few see"...

Burnham Beeches...

Licensed today: the Burnham Beeches, Bucks, with sister Kari in the glade...

Bob...

There’s a new acronym, I hear today: as heartfelt as it is ungrammatical. ‘Bob’ means ‘bored of Brexit’, which makes me a Bob, I suppose. Despite the referendum vote to leave the EU, I just couldn’t see it happening, and now, two years later, I’ve heard nothing to change my mind. Once Theresa May’s deal is voted down by parliament, in a few days, we’re guaranteed political mayhem until we have her resignation, followed by a general election. After that, all bets are off. I just hope we are to able to negotiate these choppy waters without people fighting in the streets.

Licensed last week: houses in Thornton-le-Dale, North Yorkshire...

Phone call...

Holed up in my favourite Yorkshire Dales campsite, busy processing new pix, including this shot of the Grand Union Canal...

Catholic priests...

I read on the Guardian website the good news that Catholic priests are being issued with photo identity cards. Children can now be reassured that they are being abused by a genuine Catholic priest rather than some counterfeit cleric.

Licensed yesterday: Stac Pollaidh, a mountain near Ullapool, and Loch Lurgainn, Ross-shire, Scottish Highlands...

Greggs...

Someone at Greggs thought that this picture - substituting a sausage roll for the baby Jesus in a Christmas nativity scene - was a good way to promote their cheap and nasty pastries. The Christians took it pretty well, considering. In a nice turn of phrase (and one we don't hear often enough from religious folk), the UK Evangelical Alliance said it was "not too outraged”. Substituting a Bakewell tart for Mohammed might not have gone down so well…

Black Friday...

Today, apparently, is ‘Black Friday’: a rather inauspicious name for what retailers hope will be a profitable spending spree. I’m keeping away from temptation, parked up in my favourite Yorkshire Dales campsite, with pix to process and the book to edit. Seven pix licensed yesterday, and twelve today. Wayhay!

Licensed today: The Leeds-Liverpool Canal in Leeds...

Belton Hall...

November is looking good for image sales, which means I should just about pass the number of sales (and maybe even the revenue) I had in 2017. Seven licences have dropped in today, and it's not even lunchtime yet.

Sold today: Belton Hall, near Grantham...

Otley...

Worked on the book today in Otley library, with more of the same tomorrow. In Wetherspoons now, having ordered a Christmas pizza. This is the life!

In today's Guardian, Justin Welby, Archbishop of Canterbury, has rejected singer Ariana Grande’s suggestion that God is a woman. “God is not male or female,” the archbishop said in a lecture at St Martin-in-the-Fields in London. “God is not definable. All human language about God is inadequate and to some degree metaphorical.” The Guardian can't take this seriously, I'm happy to report, and nor should anybody else. Welby should have said "Look, this whole God idea is a scam. It's worked pretty well for 2,000 years, but c'mon, it's 2018!"

Pic licensed today: Hereford Cathedral and the bridge over the River Wye...

Up north...

Drove back up north through heavy rain, with the windscreen wipers on double speed. Leeds looks a bit grim after the leafy lanes of Hampshire.

The Drunken Duck, near Ambleside, at twillight: one of the first pix I uploaded to Alamy, and a regular seller (one more license today). It was a gastropub years before the term was invented…

Hawkshead...

Another Lakeland pic licensed for a book: the grammar school in Hawkshead where the young William Wordsworth studied (and carved his name on a desk)...

Holker Hall...

Just licensed some Lakeland pix for a new book; this is Holker Hall...

First draft...

Back to Hartley Wintney for the weekend, where I printed off a first draft of the book. I don’t know if it’s any good, but it sure as hell is big!

Alamy sales are bouyant. Licensed this shot today of the Keswick Museum & Art Gallery...

Glenfinnan...

Another church pic - at Glenfinnan, in the Scottish Highlands - licensed today...

Langstone...

After a couple of days in Bishop’s Waltham (either a large village or a small town, take your pick), I drove a dozen miles to the coast. Langstone is a favourite place, because I can park up next to the estuary and carry on writing, as redshanks, curlews and egrets are feeding on the saltmarsh. There’s a tide-washed pub - the Royal Oak - accessible on foot along a raised walkway...

Brockwood Park...

I spent yesterday morning in the library of the Krishnamurti Centre, at Brockwood Park, in Hampshire. I am one of a dwindling band of people who saw him - and heard him talk - in a big marquee in the grounds. The year? It might have been 1976 (or 1977, or 1978, or 1979). I’m very glad I made the effort (I think Joy and I attended the Brockwood Park talks two summers in a row, but I may be mistaken). What I do remember, with great clarity, is Krishnamurti walking onto the improvised stage, sitting down on a stiff-backed wooden chair, smiling, and taking a minute or so to look around the audience. He sat very still: such presence, such composure! When he started talking - always without notes - he was mesmerising. According to what I read yesterday, he often didn’t know, even minutes beforehand, what he would be talking about.

Way back in 1929, having been groomed by the Theosophists as the World Teacher, he disbanded, with one stunning speech, the organisation that had been built up around him. His stated aim, from that moment on, was to help “set man unconditionally free”. “Truth”, he insisted, “is a pathless land” (a sentence more profound than anything to be found in either the Bible or the Koran). He was as good as his word: spending the rest of his long life speaking to groups of people around the world. I knew I was in the presence of someone very special, though he emphasised that he was not a guru and he didn’t need followers. His message to the world included the conviction that we shouldn’t take anything for granted. Instead of defaulting to what some authority tells us - and especially some divine authority - we should think things out for ourselves. Krishnamurti died in 1986, aged 90...

Petersfield...

I parked up yesterday evening in a little wooded car park, along with a kebab van. I was busy writing when there was a knock on the door. The kebab guy reckoned I was in the way (I wasn’t) and his customers couldn’t park (they could). It takes a brave man to argue with a guy who habitually works with knives and skewers, so I drove a few miles further on, to Petersfield. I’m parked up behind the Wetherspoons, still trying to tie up loose ends in the book.

Just licensed: the Alice Hawthorne pub in the village of Nun Monkton, near York...

A flash of understanding...

"I do not know if you have noticed that there is understanding when the mind is very quiet, even for a second; there is the flash of understanding when the verbalization of thought is not. Just experiment with it and you will see for yourself that you have the flash of understanding, that extraordinary rapidity of insight, when the mind is very still, when thought is absent, when the mind is not burdened with its own noise. So, the understanding of anything—of a modern picture, of a child, of your wife, of your neighbor, or the understanding of truth which is in all things—can only come when the mind is very still. But such stillness can not be cultivated because if you cultivate a still mind, it is not a still mind, it is a dead mind" (Krishnamurti).

Just licensed: Tewkesbury Abbey...

St Swithun's...

Licensed today, good price too : the shrine of St Swithun in Winchester Cathedral...

Footfall...

Bowder Stone...

Just licensed: the Bowder Stone in Borrowdale...

Windermere...

Licensed today: Storrs Hall Hotel...

Lacock Abbey...

Lacock Abbey, licensed today: the home of William Fox Talbot, the 'father' of photography...