Gone rogue...

This pic, of the Kirkstile Inn in Loweswater, has ‘gone rogue’ across the internet, even though I’ve only licenced it - and been paid - 5 or 6 times. What’s the opposite of ‘quids in’? ‘Quids out?’ The pub itself is likely to be the guilty party, giving the pic away without permission, attribution or payment (no payment to me, at least). Alamy are now chasing up these unauthorised uses. Such is the parlous state of stock photography that the fees for infringements may represent my best payday of this or any other month this year…

Cause of death...

According to her death certificate, as printed in the Guardian, the queen died of ‘old age’, though I’m not convinced that ‘old age’ is ever a valid cause of death. According to my oldest chum (take a bow, Howard), she was probably euthanised. Her decline was certainly sudden; two days after she shook hands with Liz Truss, she was gone. My own theory? I think she was asphyxiated by a footman, with one of her own monogrammed pillows.

Licenced today: the canal basin of the Leeds & Liverpool Canal, Granary Wharf, Leeds…

The known...

In my email in-tray this morning: wise words from Krishnamurti, which chime with what I'm currently writing about...

“To us, the known is very important. That is the only thing we have. The known being my memories, my knowledge, my experiences, my tradition, my house. And of anything unknown I am afraid. Any new government, any new way of thinking, any new way of feeling, I don’t like and I push away. Within the known, I can never understand something new. Reality is always new. Reality is always the unknown. Can the mind be free from the known as memory, as experience, so as to look at a tree, a flower or a person as though you are seeing for the first time?”

Licenced today: the Drunken Duck near Ambleside...

Montacute...

Licenced today: a postman and Royal Mail van outside the post office in the village of Montacute, Somerset…

Oakwell Hall...

Another day, another Elizabethan manor house: Oakwell Hall, dating to the late 16th century, situated at the end of Nutter Lane in Birstall…

Walsingham...

Licenced today: the Shrine of Our Lady at Walsingham, Norfolk. This kind of Catholic kitsch makes me feel a bit queasy (especially the Virgin Mary who, in this tableau, looks like a moth)…

Farnham...

Licenced yesterday: the Jolly Sailor pub in Farnham, Surrey…

Shibden Hall...

Licenced today: Shibden Hall, near Halifax, West Yorkshire…

Petersfield...

Licenced today: the square in the centre of Petersfield, Hampshire...

Ramsay’s Gin...

Gordon Ramsay’s in hot water because the ad for his new gin has been banned for making false nutritional claims. He launched the gin last year, in partnership with the Scottish producer Eden Mill. Ramsay’s Gin is described on the distiller’s website as a “delicious new take on a classic London dry gin inspired by the taste of Scotland”. Hmmm… I’m wondering what Scotland might taste like. Shortbread? Heroin?? Victimhood??? An unwarranted sense of grievance????

The best price of the month, today, for a so-so pic: the post office in Kippax, West Yorkshire...

Much ado about nothing...

Instead of watching the funeral, I’d planned to go to Blacktoft Sands: to share a convivial hour or two with other bird-watching republicans. But the day was overcast and, well, once I’d checked out the BBC website, it was easier just to carry on watching (though I fell asleep for half an hour during the funeral service in Westminster Abbey, and missed Justin Welby telling his captive audience, during the sermon, that “We will all face the merciful judgement of God”).

Here we are, in straitened times, reeling from the covid pandemic and with a difficult winter yet to come. There will be other old ladies dying this winter, because they can’t afford to turn the heating on. Yet nobody looked at the plans for the funeral - decades in the planning, I imagine - and wondered if it might be a good idea to scale the event down a bit. So we got the full monty, with the pomp and pageantry cranked up to 11… and then some.

The proceedings must have cost a fortune (and all from the public purse); they were certainly labour intensive. The Queen's coffin was accompanied by the bearer party of the Grenadier Guards, the King's Body Guards of the Honourable Corps of Gentlemen at Arms, the Yeomen of the Guard and the Royal Company of Archers, with their pikes and swords, halberds and bows, epaulettes and aiguillettes, bearskins, ruffs, bonnets, croziers, chasubles, orbs, sceptres, mitres and cockades. When they’re not following the royal casket, with their heads bowed, what do these people do all day?

The performance was certainly impressive, if you like that sort of thing. I looked in vain for a wink of an eye or the raising of an eyebrow: any acknowledgement, by someone, somewhere, that this carefully choreographed cosplay, this precision-tooled royal pantomine, was just a ridiculous joke…

'Holy' lands...

Selby Abbey...

Another couple of sales for this shot of Selby Abbey...

Lying in state...

The BBC is showing a live feed of the queen’s lying in state at Westminster Hall. Two lines of well-wishers are filing past the coffin on the catafalque; some bow, some curtsey, some salute. It’s impressive to watch so many people ‘paying their respects’, in the knowledge that they have queued for many hours for these few moments. It would be possible, and certainly more convenient, to remember Queen Elizabeth II in the privacy of their own homes, but maybe they just want to “be there”: to play a small role in a national event. Many will have actually enjoyed the travel, the expense, the inconvenience, the long hours of waiting, and regard the experience as both a “day to remember” and “something to tell the grandchildren”.

Licenced today: village cricket at Crakehall, North Yorkshire. A pic so old that it was shot on film, not digital. I tried (but failed) to recreate the shot last spring, hoping that the cherry blossom would still be out during Crakehall’s first home game of the new season…

An atheist for president?...

Weston by Welland...

Licenced today: a man delivering a package in the village of Weston by Welland, Northamptonshire...

Respect...

We’re hearing a lot about respect, especially now, following the death of Queen Elizabeth II. This kind of respect seems more of a requirement than a request, just as a public display of grief by her subjects, for a woman who died at the age of 96, is deemed to be almost compulsory. I have decided that, as a mark of respect, I shall refrain from touching myself below the waist until she is six feet under.

We’re supposed to respect religious beliefs too. But if I really respected the tenets of Christianity, then I would be accepting Jesus as my Lord and Saviour. And if I really respected Islam, I’d be a Muslim. The fact that I can see, all too clearly, the faultlines of faith, is why I'm an atheist. I respect the right of anyone to have religious beliefs - this is what freedom of expression means - but I don’t respect the tenets of any particular faith. And I don’t care to be told what I must respect; respect, in both the religious and secular realms, should be earned, not demanded. 

Licenced today: cottages overlooking the village green, in Groombridge, Kent…

Thieves beware...

Licensed today: a sign warning about farm thieves, on farm gate in Swaledale, North Yorkshire…

Preston bus station...

Licenced today: the iconic bus station and multi-storey car park in Preston, Lancashire…

Punishments for apostasy...

Countries where apostasy from Islam (ie leaving the religion) is a punishable offence...

Poundbury piazza...

While King Charles is enjoying the benefits of privilege - unmerited, nepotistic and unelected - it cheers me to hear that the only role assigned to his brother, Andrew, is to take care of the Queen’s corgis.

Licenced today: a square (or should that be ‘piazza’?) in Poundbury: once known, rather dissmissively, as Prince Charles’s vanity project, and now known, of course, as King Charles’s vanity project…

Whinchat...

As a break from the wall-to-wall media coverage of the royal family, I enjoyed a lazy afternoon at North Cave Wetlands. It felt like the last day of summer: warm, slightly hazy, with the last few swallows and martins dipping over the water. There were lots of waders about: redshank, spotted redshank, greenshank, green sandpiper, common sandpiper, snipe, ruff, curlew and black tailed godwit. A water rail skulking in the reeds would have usually have been the best sighting, but today’s highlight was a pair of whinchats which - together with a pair of whitethroats - were gorging themselves on elderberries. When I called in at the last hide, after my walk around the reserve, there were about a dozen people inside. They were spellbound by the sight of a kingfisher fishing in the shallows, and returning after each catch to the same perch, no more than five yards away. The kingfisher flew away, the people tiptoed out and, after watching a dabchick feeding its young, I headed home…

Whinchat (image via Creative Commons)...

The Onion...

The Onion’s idiosyncratic take on the royal death. Full story here...

Sharia law...

During his many years as an under-employed, bat-eared proponent of lost causes and half-baked ideas, King Charles was very supportive of Islam and Islamic culture. He even recommended the implementation of sharia law in this country. His public advocacy of Islam can be traced back to 1989, when Ayatollah Khomeini issued his fatwa against Salman Rushdie and his novel The Satanic Verses. Instead of defending Rushdie's freedom of speech, Charles reflected instead on the ‘positive’ aspects of Islam.

In a speech delivered in 1993, he said “Our judgement of Islam has been grossly distorted by taking the extremes to the norm… For example, people in this country frequently argue that the sharia law of the Islamic world is cruel, barbaric and unjust. Our newspapers, above all, love to peddle those unthinking prejudices. The truth is, of course, different and always more complex. My own understanding is that extremes, like the cutting off of hands, are rarely practised. The guiding principle and spirit of Islamic law, taken straight from the Quran, should be those of equity and compassion”.

The following year Charles admitted adultery which, according to sharia law, is a capital crime. The punishment? Death by stoning…

God save the king…

All hail King Charles III, who, at the age of 73, is the longest-serving heir to the throne in British history. Today he assumed the roles of Head of State, Head of the Armed Forces and, even worse, Head of the Church of England.

Licenced today: a gas engineer calling at a house in Hull… 

Jorvik Viking Centre...

According to the Guardian, miserable shoppers are rediscovering the nostalgic pleasure of soft, white, sliced white bread. And why not? For mopping up gravy, or making a chip butty, there’s nothing better than Warburton’s Toastie. It fulfils all the basic requirements of bread. When you fold it, it stays folded. It tastes of nothing, so won’t mask the subtle taste of McCain’s oven chips. It stays ‘fresh’ for days: still malleable even after it’s started to go mouldy.

Licenced today: signs for the Jorvik Viking Centre, Coppergate, York…

Broad Leys...

Licenced today: Broad Leys, clubhouse of the Windermere Motor Boat Racing Club, Ghyll Head, Cumbria…

Poundbury...

The Iranian government are planning to use facial recognition technology to identify women who are breaking the punitive dress codes. Life for women in Iran is getting worse, not better, as the restrictive and misogynist ‘values’ of 7th century Arabia are being imported, unreformed, into the 21st. If we want to know what a totalitarian theocracy looks like, this is it.

Licenced today: the neo-classical fire station in Poundbury, Dorset… 

Police patrol...

Licenced last week: a police car in Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire…

Tom Finney...

Licenced today: the sculpture of Sir Tom Finney outside Deepdale, Preston FC's football ground in Lancashire (pitches didn't drain so well in years gone by)…

Headingley cricket...

The swifts have gone, and the last few swallows and house martins are ready to make their long flight south. The cricket season is ending too, though there’s still a third test match, England v South Africa, to decide a wildly fluctuating series (S Africa won the first game by an innings, England won the second by a similar margin).

The Hundred franchise is concluding, without much interest from me. The men’s version is fine, no doubt, for those who want to see every other ball slogged for six, but even that can become tedious. Smashing a cricket ball into the crowd has already ended in tears; one of these days it will surely end in intensive care… or worse.

The women’s Hundred is at least offering women the opportunity to play cricket for a living, and in front of big crowds. The penultimate match in the competition is this afternoon, to see who plays in tomorrow’s final at Lords. Without a team to support, I’m happy to get behind Smriti Mandhana, my ‘cricketing crush’, who opens the batting for the Southern Braves. 

Licenced today: the Carnegie Pavilion at Headingley Cricket Ground…

Bolling Hall...

Licenced today: Bolling Hall in Bradford…