Holker Hall...

Licenced today: the formal gardens at Holker Hall, South Lakeland, one of England's less impressive stately homes (it looks more like a sanitorium)…

Priorities...

With the price of just about everything going up, the fees for stock photography are bucking the trend by going down. Even if the prices have bottomed out - it’s possible - the future of stock photography looks unpromising. Though the demand for imagery remains high, it’s outstripped by the supply, which tends to keep prices low. In terms of £££, buying more camera or computer equipment seems more of an indulgence than an investment; even filling the car up with diesel, for a picture-taking trip, is getting harder to justify. I will continue to shoot pix when I’m out and about, and upload them to Alamy, but it will no longer occupy much of my time.     

Instead I’ve made a little promise to myself: for the first three hours of every day, while my mind is still ‘morning fresh’, I will either write something new or edit something I’ve already written. And the other priority will be to redouble my efforts to get the big book into print. I’ve been pratting about for far too long…

Platinum jubilee...

As though life wasn’t difficult enough already, we are now, apparently, running out of flags and bunting to mark the Queen’s platinum jubilee. The Old Sunday School may have to stay undecorated. Without descending into the shady underworld of cryptocurrencies, I can’t find a bookie to take my bet on the date of Her Majesty’s death (I think the jubilee celebrations might prove to be too much for her). Having voted down the street party idea, the good people of Asselby have decided instead on a public lynching, to remind themselves of the “good old days”.

Selby Abbey, licenced today...

And a pic of the abbey nave, taken in June 2016, decorated for the Queen's 90th birthday...

Great Dixter...

Licenced today: the gardens at Great Dixter, Northiam, East Sussex...

Bulletproof backpack...

One option, but not the best option, for keeping children safe at school. According to this eBay listing, “the ProShield backpack has been tested and certified against .357 magnum, 44 magnum, 9mm and .45 bullets by the National Institute of Justice”. How reassuring...

Another school shooting...

Another week and another school shooting: one of 212 mass shootings this year in America (and we’re still only in May). After shooting his grandmother, an 18-year-old youth walked into the elementary school in the small Texan town of Uvalde and turned both rifle barrels on the children. By the time law enforcement officers arrived, he had killed 19 children and two adults.

Former congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona, herself a victim of a mass shooting in 2011, wondered “How many young lives will be cut short, families shattered, communities traumatized because our leaders refuse to act on gun violence? This is a uniquely American problem, which is now the leading cause of death for American children”. “Thoughts and prayers”, though offered after every school shooting, seem to have little or no effect

Satirical website, The Onion, managed to capture the inherant contradictions in America’s gun culture - headline: “No Way To Prevent This,” Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens - even though the piece was actually written in response to last week’s mass school shooting, in Buffalo, New York…

Penrith...

As a prescient and much-needed antidote to Republican craziness, I watched this short video of Democrat Senator Mallory McMorrow giving an impassioned speech in congress. Very impressive.

Licenced today: Penrith at twilight...

Shopping in Selby...

Licenced today: the kind of stock pic that sells most often. Not serene landscapes or sun-dappled woodland, but people milling around their local supermarket…

The Sparrow in the Hall...

Having dozed through the daily service on Radio 4, which this morning came from Durham Cathedral, I woke up during the reading of this familiar passsage from Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of England. The date is the 7th century CE, the venue is King Edwin’s mead hall in his Northumbrian kingdom, and the speaker is an un-named courtier.

“The present life of man upon earth, O king, seems to me, in comparison with that time which is unknown to us, like to the swift flight of a sparrow through the house wherein you sit at supper in winter, with your ealdormen and thegns, while the fire blazes in the midst, and the hall is warmed, but the wintry storms of rain or snow are raging abroad. The sparrow, flying in at one door and immediately out at another, whilst he is within, is safe from the wintry tempest; but after a short space of fair weather, he immediately vanishes out of your sight, passing from winter into winter again. So this life of man appears for a little while, but of what is to follow or what went before we know nothing at all. If, therefore, this new doctrine tells us something more certain, it seems justly to deserve to be followed”.

The “new doctrine” mentioned in the final sentence is, of course, Christianity, as advanced by the missionary Paulinus. If Christianity could explain what would happen to us when we died, then the pagan king would consider converting to the faith (with the unspoken corrollary that if the King adopted Christianty, his subjects would follow his example). Though King Edwin was convinced by the Christian promise of an afterlife, my interest is in the first few lines, with the courtier describing the convivial scene inside the mead hall, and the brief incursion of a sparrow, with almost cinematic clarity. It’s a work of observation, not fabrication.

The Christian afterlife may offer a degree of consolation - especially when the “wintry storms” are raging outside - but I don’t buy it. How consoling is it, really, to believe propositions which simply aren’t true? I identify instead with the scene, as described so beautifully in this passage, and the metaphor to illustrate both the shortness of life and the inevitability of death. I’m not the king, or any of his courtiers, enjoying the warmth and company in the mead hall; I am, of course, the sparrow!…

North Cliffe Wood...

Licenced yesterday: bluebells in North Cliffe Wood, a Yorkshire Wildlife Trust nature reserve…

Tiles of the unexpected…

When I spotted a broken tile on the roof of the Old Sunday School, one neighbour let me have a couple of roof-tiles left over from a re-roofing job (I’d feel daft going into a builders’ merchants and asking to buy just one tile!). Another neighbour got out his extendable ladders, removed the damaged tile and slotted in the new one… just before it started to rain.

Licenced yesterday: the town hall of Bourne in Lincolnshire, a Palladian mansion in miniature...

Bridges over the Ouse...

Local traffic still crosses the tidal River Ouse on Boothferry Bridge, build in 1929. As the name implies, the bridge was built to replace a ferry which had operated since the 14th century. Despite it being a swing bridge, I have yet to see it open to allow a boat through. The Ouse is no longer a busy waterway. A traffic bottleneck at the best of times, the bridge is currently undergoing repairs, and is best avoided.

The traffic sails serenely past on the new bridge, built in the 1970s, which carries the M62 motorway across the river. Pic licenced today. The price? Somewhere between a nod of appreciation and a snort of derision...

Goodbye...

It’s time to say goodbye. The Romahome is sold, the money’s in the bank and the new owner will drive it away this afternoon. I feel kinda sad - we’ve shared some good times together - but also relieved. I can’t imagine a time when I won’t want to drive somewhere, park up and have a kip… so I’m on the lookout for a bog-standard van… just big enough to throw a mattress in the back…

Great Langdale...

Licenced today: a campsite in Great Langdale...

Human rights...

In response to Afghanistan’s $500m budget deficit, the Taliban have dissolved five key departments of the former US-backed government. It will surprise nobody that the country’s human rights commission has been deemed surplus to requirements. Human rights in Islam are firmly rooted in the belief that God, and God alone, is the law giver and the source of all human rights: a conviction considered to be entirely orthodox and in no sense extreme.

Licenced today: the cooling towers of Drax power station, and some of the new houses, on the edge of Drax village, whose residents enjoy an enviable view... 

Innocence and simplicity...

More prescient observations from Krishnamurti, which arrived in my email in-tray this morning.

“Religions the world over have insisted on the torture of self-denial, abstemiousness, control, suppression, and every form of psychological amputation. Surely to find whatever there is to be found, something not the result of your tortured, despairing life, you must have a mind that is untortured, unmutilated, very simple, very clear, without having any particular direction; a quality of mind that is really innocent, though it may have lived a thousand experiences. You must have a certain quality of open, fresh innocence”.

Licenced today: the Leeds & Liverpool canal in the centre of Skipton...

Wedding belles...

I wondered why my snap seemed vaguely familiar…

The Parting Glass...

What a great weekend: a family wedding, on the wrong side of the Pennines, followed by a gig in Kendal by Karine Polwart, my musical lockdown discovery. The wedding reception was held in the pavilion of the East Lancs cricket club, with a game in progress under blue skies and whispy clouds (though not a swallow in sight). The speeches were short, and perfectly pitched, with a few jokes (nothing too smutty), reminiscences and hopes for the future. No shouting matches, no fist-fights: an altogether wholesome and enjoyable affair.

I headed north, long before the disco was due to start, and managed to squeeze the van into the last space in the car park at the Old Brewery arts centre. The music was stripped back: just Karine singing and pianist Dave Milligan playing. According to one review of her most recent album, “This melodic and mellifluous music is a perfect illustration of the richness of restraint”, and I can’t argue with that. Her songs are still floating around in my head, especially The Parting Glass, which was, appropriately, the last song of a magical evening.

Blackburn Cathedral, yesterday morning...

Summer visitors...

The swifts are back! The swifts are back! Not in ones and two, like the swallows, but in a noisy gang, streaking and shrieking over the rooftops of the village (the pic refers to Aldeburgh, Suffolk, where the locals feel rather proprietorial about 'their' swifts)...

Broken promises...

If we want to see how Islam operates, when unencumbered by western democratic norms, we should look to Afghanistan, where the Taliban are reverting to type by re-establishing a brutal theocracy. Instead of tackling the nation’s many economic problems, the pious men fronting the Orwellian-sounding Ministry of Vice and Virtue are busy doing what they do best: curtailing women’s freedom and autonomy.

Women are being forced back into cloth bags, and preferably the full-length, all-enveloping burqa (if womens’ faces are seen in public, then, in a Machiavellian plot twist, it's their male guardians who face fines or prison). Taliban representatives have reneged on their earlier promises to allow teenage girls back into secondary education and women to work outside healthcare and education. Women are being told not to travel anywhere without a male escort, and, basically, to stay at home. 

A typical springtime scene around the 'marshland villages'...

Reflections...

W H Auden described his face, in later years, as looking like “a wedding cake left out in the rain” (“If that's his face, what must his scrotum look like?”, David Hockney mused, after his first meeting with the poet). Thoughts like these pass through my mind whenever I catch a glimpse of myself in the bathroom mirror. Inside my head I’m still a young man, though my raddled features tell a rather different story.

The way we live today: upmarket groceries being delivered to a house in Hotham... 

Melton Mowbray...

Licenced today: Melton Mowbray in Leicestershire…

Yarn bombing...

I think that's what it's called...

Epworth...

The village of Epworth this morning. From my vantage point I noticed a blue plaque behind me: “In June 1852 this market place was the scene of one of the greatest peacetime riots in British history”. During the lead-up to the general election of 1852, the three candidates for the North Lincolnshire seat made the unwise decision to hold a political address, in Epworth, on the same day. Violence erupted in the market place, between the candidates’ supporters, with stones and ginger beer bottles being thrown, and people trampled by horses. It took many hours for the local constabulary to restore order...

Cricket at Crakehall...

Today’s plan was good: to take some pictures at Crakehall, one of the most attractive cricket grounds I know, during the first home game of the season. It was only when I got the pix back home that I found the sky, on almost every shot, was filled with a multitude of midges. Aaargh! I salvaged a couple… and deleted the rest…

The price of petrol...

Licenced today: a Shell lorry delivering fuel to a petrol station in Ulverston, Cumbria…

He's back... and he's in business...

Had a wander round Goole this morning and did a double-take when I saw this shop front…

Black-necked grebe...

I called in at North Cave Wetlands yesterday, to see what was about. Avocets were sitting on eggs and, in the absence of marsh harriers, may hopefully raise a brood (avocet chicks, fluffy and long-legged, are a sight to gladden the stoniest heart). Half a dozen terns were wheeling around. Their flight is lazy and loping, until they spot a fish and dive. A stoat carried its young - known as kits - one by one into the woods: a sight which left the couple next to me in a state of rapture. The best sighting was a black-necked grebe, in summer plumage, just like in the photo, with a fan of golden feathers on both sides of the head. It was swimming near little grebes and great crested grebes, which gave a good indication of size. They dive constantly, but with no apparent effort; one second they’re swimming, then suddenly there’s just a widening ripple (Pic by RickenMon, Creative Commons)...

Off to work...

A farmer making an early start this morning...

Troutbeck blossom...

Licenced today: two walkers on a track - Longmire Road - in the Troutbeck Valley…

The 'Wicked Bible'...

According to an account in today's Guardian, a copy of the so-called ‘Wicked Bible’ has turned up in New Zealand. By omitting the word “not” from the seventh commandment, this edition, of 1631, appeared to advocate adultery. No one knows how the mistake occurred (or whether it was a mistake at all, rather than, say, an act of literary sabotage by an underpaid and under-appreciated printer’s apprentice). The printers Robert Barker and Martin Lucas were summoned by King Charles I and hauled before the court, where they were fined £300, admonished for their sloppy workmanship and stripped of their printing licence. With the court ordering all Wicked Bibles to be burned, only about twenty copies were saved from the flames.

One aspect of this quirky footnote to biblical history had passed me by. I wasn’t aware, until I read it today, that it took a year for the original typesetting error to be discovered. A year! The Bible is a hard slog, even for the most assiduous readers, which may explain why so many Christians hug their Bible to their chests, wave it like a flag or brandish it like a weapon, instead of actually reading it. In 1631, as now, most Christians would have read a selection of carefully curated excerpts from the good book, and little else. I wonder what percentage of even the most committed Christians have read the Bible in its tedious entirety, from Genesis to Revelation.

Licenced today, for a fee that wouldn't even buy a Big Mac...