Public schools...

According to an article in today’s Guardian, the Nazis based their elite schools - set up to groom future leaders of the Third Reich - on British public schools such as Eton and Harrow. Apparently the Nazis wanted to learn from the “character-forming” example of the British school system. They also saw the largely independent role of the school headmaster as an embodiment of the “Führer-principle”. Now why does that not surprise me?...

Wetherspoon...

Licenced today: the Dog Beck - a Wetherspoon pub - in Penrith, Cumbria…

Poppy day...

Today in Asselby...

Cawfield Quarry...

A rare weekend sale: Cawfield Quarry, on Hadrian's Wall near Haltwhistle, Northumberland National Park…

Prejudice...

This quote from Krishnamurti, which arrived in my in-tray this morning, really ‘spoke' to me…

Am I aware of you if I am prejudiced against you? My prejudice projects itself and prevents me from looking, and therefore I am not aware of you. To be aware, I must be aware of my prejudices, of my likes and dislikes, aware of my conditioning, that I am a Dutchman, a Hindu, a Buddhist, a Muslim. Whatever I am, I must be aware of it. And to be aware of it, I must not deny it. I mustn’t deny what I see in myself; I must look at it.

I must be aware without choice, saying, ‘I’ll keep this, I won’t keep that.’ So awareness means to be aware without choice so that I can look. I can look into myself without any choice. I won’t say, ‘This is good, this is bad, this is beautiful, I’ll keep it, that is ugly, I won’t keep,’ but I will look. I will see but not judge. Can I see without judging? Can I see violence in me without judging it? This means without the censor, without the entity that judges, that says violence is wrong. Can I look at it? I can only look if there is no opposite.

If I don’t have the ideal of non-violence, I can look at violence. I have been conditioned to accept the ideal, and I see that prevents me from looking at violence. So can I look at it without any ideal? And if I can look at it without an ideal, I have broken down the conditioning. Therefore the mind can look freely. So I have learnt something: the mind can be free and not be a slave to environment… 

Cows...

 Licenced today: cows at a feeding station, Bouth, South Lakeland…

Going through the motions...

The English language is wonderfully nuanced, with some words having a very narrow and specific meaning. ‘Scrumping’ isn’t just stealing fruit; it’s stealing apples. ‘Punnet’ is a container, but only for soft fruit. We have a word - ‘defenstration’ - to describe falling, or being pushed, out of a window. ‘Tines’ have one meaning only: the prongs of a fork. ‘Genuflection’ is kneeling. An ‘embrasure’ is a refuge for pedestrians on a bridge.

We also have some odd gaps in the language, as exemplified by a DIY testing kit for bowel cancer, which arrived by post yesterday. According to the instructions, you take the little stick and drag it across the… well, what? We have ‘faeces’, ‘shit’, ’turd’, ‘stool’ and ‘excrement’… but the writer of the instruction booklet has settled on ‘poo’. Does anyone really say ‘poo’… unless they’re talking to, or about, a toddler?

Two pix licenced today: taken on the same day, and within 50 metres of each other, at River Head in Driffield...