View allAll Photos Tagged ECCENTRICS
Love a good hardcore hardtail, always fun to ride the NS. And yes, I do love the colour.
One of my favourite tracks in Wellington. No jumps, no berms, it's not fast. But it is super narrow and tight, got to watch your bars and pedals the whole way down. It's good honest mountain biking.
ひときわ目をひく黄色の入口。中は暗がりになっています。行きどまりにぶつかったら天井を見上げてみましょう。そして、構造を体で覚えこんだら「切り閉じの間」に挑戦してみましょう。
世界的に有名なアーティスト、荒川修作氏とそのパートナーで詩人のマドリン・ギンズ氏の30数年に及ぶ構想を実現した、身体で直接体験できるアート作品です。
この作品はメインパビリオン「極限で似るものの家」と「楕円形のフィールド」の2つの部分から構成されています。「楕円形のフィールド」には、「極限で似るものの家」を分割した9つのパビリオンが点在し、さらに、対をなす丘とくぼみ、148もの曲がりくねった回遊路、大小さまざまな日本列島などがつくられています。
ここでは、皆さまが身体を使い、バランスをとりながら、私たちの身体の持つ様々な可能性を見つけることができます。予想もつかない"不思議"と出会える空間をぜひお楽しみください！
十二単の羽衣を着た天女が空から舞い降りたかのような色鮮やかな建物。外壁の24色はすべて内部にも反映され、不規則に注ぐ自然光の効果とあいまって、不思議な空間を作り出しています。荒川・ギンズ両氏が設計したこの建物では、デッサンやCGなどの作品も展示しています。
In 1886 an eccentric woman named Sarah Winchester travelled from New Haven, Connecticut, to San Jose, California, to start a new life. She purchased a small eight-room farmhouse and started a small renovation project that would take 36 years and $5.5 million (in the money of the time), only stopping when she passed away in 1922. By the time she was done, the Winchester Mansion was a modern marvel with indoor plumbing, multiple elevators, a hot shower, and central heating. It had over 160 rooms and 40 bedrooms, 10,000 windows, and even 2 basements. Of course, that’s not all that’s unique about the house. Not all 2,000 doors can be walked through—one leads to an eight-foot drop to a kitchen sink, another to a 15-foot drop into bushes in the garden below. Staircases lead straight to ceilings, expensive Tiffany stained-glass windows were installed in places where they would get no light, and there are more secret passages than Narnia. A particularly odd delight is a cabinet that, when opened, extends through thirty rooms of the house. No one is quite sure why Mrs. Winchester demanded constant changes to her very large house. Of course, there are stories. Paying yourself first means you get paid before anyone else. Do that by setting up a monthly transfer of money that goes into a separate savings or investment account. Reversible Destiny believed that changes in bodily perception would lead to changes in consciousness. Consequently, they developed architecture and constructed environments that challenge the body as a way to "reverse our destinies. Lifestyle inflation. It’s when your spending goes up as your income goes up. Most people fall victim to this. And if you do it your whole life then get ready to work until you’re so old or sick that you can’t physically work anymore. It’s one reason why it’s so important to track your finances, because it lifestyle inflation creeps in unconsciously without you even realizing it. Let’s say you get a $10,000 raise. You might decide you deserve to drive a nicer car, buy that more expensive bottle of wine, or move to a place with granite countertops. Soon your raise disappears, and you’re back complaining to your boss that you need another one. It’s why NBA players who take pay cuts to $6.4 million say it’s going to be hard on their family. During this year at 31 years old I quit lifestyle inflation. Because I was at work and realized there were people 25 years older than me still doing the nine-to-five grind. I thought, “What kind of life is that? I can’t do that to my future self.” I needed to tip the scale so I was in control of my life, not some job. And I started doing research, googling things like “financial freedom” and “early retirement,” and the book Your Money or Your Life kept coming up. I read it, and it changed my life."Do you want to live in an apartment or house that can help you determine the nature and extent of interactions between you and the universe?" This is one of many big questions posed by Reversible Destiny, a foundation established with the goal of extending the human lifespan via architectural design.Reversible Destiny—founded by Shusaku Arakawa, a Japanese neo-Dadaist and associate of Marcel Duchamp, and Madeline Gins, an American poet with a background in physics and Eastern philosophy—has produced several homes and recreational sites designed to create a more robust body and mind. Chief among them are the Reversible Destiny Lofts in Tokyo, a set of nine apartments built in 1995 that come with instructions for use. The lofts have spherical rooms, undulating concrete floors riddled with bumps, and candy-colored walls. Poles and ladders run from floor to ceiling in unexpected places and electrical outlets dangle from above. Each apartment resembles a playground designed without regard for child safety regulations.The Site of Reversible Destiny is an “experience park” opened in 1995 designed by Nagoya-born, New York-based artist Arakawa Shusaku and his wife and artistic partner, poet Madeline Gins. The theme of the park is “encountering the unexpected,” spreading across about 18,000 square meters. The artist Shusaku Arakawa and poet Madeline Gins realized here their bold and reckless 30-year vision. The site consists of a main pavilion called the “Critical Resemblance House” and the vast bowl-like “Elliptical Field“. The old Chris worked to earn and earned to consume. And my new approach was to work to earn, earn to save, and save to invest, so I could stop working. That’s freedom.It sounds simple, but where do you start? 1. Implement the 80-20 rule. Most people have heard of the “Pareto Principle,” also known as the 80-20 rule. The idea, introduced by Vilfredo Pareto in the 1790s, is that 20 percent of your efforts produce 80 percent of the results. If you apply that to your finances, you can make a massive impact undoing lifestyle inflation by focusing on just a few big areas. Where you spend the most money (again, you’re tracking that, right?) is probably similar to the average American household: Housing and utilities ($16,895), transportation ($7,658), and food ($6,372). So target changes in those areas first. Renting is better than buying, even though most people don’t believe it. If you’re going to buy, then at least buy less house.The concept behind the unconventional design is that inhabitants will be forced to use their brains and bodies in unusual ways in order to navigate the space. There is no chance of settling into routines and rote movements, because the challenging architecture makes it impossible. The goal is to never become comfortable—comfort, according to Reversible Destiny's philosophy, means death. Arakawa and Gins, no great fans of mortality, sought to make death illegal. In addition to the Tokyo lofts, which are still available for short-term stays, the foundation built the Bioscleave House, also known as the Lifespan Extending Villa, in East Hampton, New York, and the Site of Reversible Destiny, a park in the small Japanese town of Yoro. Both feature Arakawa and Gins' disorienting design elements, such as uneven surfaces, mazes, domes, and shocks of color.
Despite their valiant efforts to defy death, Arakawa and Gins both succumbed to the inevitability of linear time—Arakawa died in 2010, and Gins in January 2014. Their work, however, survives as a vibrant testament to their audacious lives.
In the 1950s, the average house in the U.S. was 983 square feet – now it’s 2,453! Bigger is not better when it comes to housing, as more house means more money to heat and cool, more money towards property taxes, more money towards maintenance and repairs, and maybe most importantly, more loans. Location matters too, so think like a cat when it comes to picking where to live. Reversible Destiny traces the history of the Sicilian mafia to its nineteenth-century roots and examines its late twentieth-century involvement in urban real estate and construction as well as drugs. Based on research in the regional capital of Palermo, this book suggests lessons regarding secretive organized crime: its capacity to reproduce a subculture of violence through time, its acquisition of a dense connective web of political and financial protectors during the Cold War era, and the sad reality that repressing it easily risks harming vulnerable people and communities. Charting the efforts of both the judiciary and a citizen's social movement to reverse the mafia's economic, political, and cultural power, the authors establish a framework for understanding both the difficulties and the accomplishments of Sicily's multifaceted antimafia efforts. No one had any idea where cats went until researchers put GPS on them. They found most cats stay within 200 feet of their home. Everything they need is right there. For you, that means living close to your job and urban amenities. Smart millionaires drive 10-year-old cars, because they don’t care what people think of them. Or, they don’t even own a car because they strategically picked where to live and can use public transportation or their legs to get around.Located at their private residence, Portrack House, near Dumfries, Scotland, the garden’s design is guided by the fundamentals of modern physics and, according to Jencks, brings out the basic elements that underlie the cosmos. From 1989 until Keswick’s death in 1995, Jencks and his wife, an expert on Chinese gardens, met with horticulturists and scientists in order to design a landscape that would bridge the worlds of art, nature and science. Perhaps viewed as an unconventional approach to landscaping, the garden features a dizzying display of geometric fractals that all illuminate - or at least are inspired by - concepts of black holes, string theory, and the “Big Bang.” The garden features five major areas connected by a number of man-made lakes, bridges and other architectural works, including large white staircases and terraces that zigzag down a green hillside, representing the story of the creation of the universe. If you need to own a car, at least drive a 3-year-old+ and fuel efficient one. I like the jack-of-all trades Honda Fit, or the more sporty Mazda 3 Hatchback. Do preventative maintenance to mitigate the risk of costly repairs, negotiate your car insurance, and if you’re in a two-car household, think how you could downsize to one.
After you focus on the big wins, you might need to get control over those everyday dollars that leak from your bank account. Here are five tactics I use to help me out.
Left to right: 3/4 pin technique, thin L liftarm technique, MackBricks balanced disc technique, and MackBricks compact disc technique
He didn't notice me but I noticed him, flaunting those feet like he didn't care Those socked feet, totally vulnerable were now within my grasp.
Another portrait addition to my on going series focused on people who I call Eccentrics. This man was a vendor selling small horns at a local Renaissance festival. 5x7 oil on panel.
a certain degree of eccentricity seems almost to be a pre requisite for a market stall holder in london.
Morro Strand State Beach,
Morro Bay, California
Many of the sand dollars cast onto the beach have these barnacles attached. Though the barnacles can live on (attach to) other hard surfaces, they show "a distinct preference to attach to other forms of marine life, including mollusk shells, exoskeletons of crustaceans and the eccentric sand dollar. . ."--The Beachcomber's Guide to Seashore Life of California, J. Duane Sept.
Note that the name "eccentric" for the sand dollar does not refer to personality or behavior as in humans, but to the off-center pattern on what is typically a radially symmetrical animal.
2020 collection
wearable wall hanging
luxuriently sculptured
with Gründl Scotland art-yarn
& matching materials
from stash in the spectacular colors
of an aurora borealis
curly freeform
knitting & crochet
Northern Lights illusion
plain knitting with a twist
incorporated organic shapes
dancing rivers of colour
poured out by heaven
versatile tunic pseudo-poncho
coat wrap-rap stole
in sophisticated lagenlook design
St Michael, Hockering, Norfolk
I had long looked forward to coming back to Hockering. When I did it was to the pleasure of a church stunningly cared for, after many years of decay. I had witnessed the start of this TLC some ten years before, when I had the privilege to meet one of the great Norfolk eccentrics, one of the truly memorable characters of my journey around the churches of East Anglia. Sadly, it seems that he is no longer with us.
In 2006, I wrote: We came to Hockering the morning after the second exorcism. I couldn't honestly say that all was calm. It was a day of sunshine and blizzards, when the light first dazzled and then submitted to a baffling of snowflakes as fat as goose feathers. We church-hopped between the flurries, catching glimpses and seeking shelter. It was a day to battle with obscurity, and as I said to Peter later, it was difficult to know where to start. First of all, perhaps, there was the screaming skull. Or was it the cold spots? There were a lot of cold spots, apparently. But none of that could have happened without the phone call about the SatNav. And then later there were the Saints, and there were the extraordinary Berneys, and there was Catholic treasure from beyond the great divide. Such a lot to remember. Perhaps it's best to start at the beginning.
St Michael, Hockering, is a small-scale work of the early 14th century, vigorously enhanced in the late 15th or early 16th century, and then, in part, enthusiastically refurbished by the Victorians in the 1850s, as we shall see. However, it still retains a lot of its decorated charm, and the tower is curious because the buttresses stop short of the later bell stage, making it look like a small head on broad shoulders. The pretty pinnacles and battlements help to alleviate this; a crowning, if you like. The church sits among fields to the west of the village, and just to the north of the main road from Norwich to the Midlands, which slices clinically through the otherwise profoundly rural landscape of central Norfolk.
We were in Peter's car, heading across the A47 to St Michael. The keyholder was in the back. He was in his fifties I suppose, a cheerful man and, as it would turn out, a kindly man. He was heavily bearded, with longish hair, as if he had intended to be on the hippy trail to India, but had ended up in Norfolk instead. He wore a leather jerkin, rubber waders and a pearl earring. We were really grateful that he was giving up his time. He told us about the lot who'd come yesterday. They'd also been grateful. They hadn't known, of course, that if they'd waited a while he'd have been there anyway. He spent hours every day at the church, because he was verger and sexton and handyman and cleaner and silver polisher and carpenter and chief cook and bottlewasher all in one. We hadn't known that either of course, but it didn't matter.
Yes, that lot yesterday had been waiting for him when he got there, and he knew straight away it was an exorcism because there'd been an exorcism five years ago, and this was just like that. And five years ago funny things had been happening; you'd take the candle stocks off the altar and lock them away, and when you were back out in the nave you'd hear a clatter, and you'd go back to the vestry and find them rolling around on the floor. But now they had this woman with them who could sense evil. She could see it, she could smell it.
I was trying very hard not to catch Peter's eye. I feared it might break the spell. I have now visited nearly 1200 churches in Norfolk and Suffolk, but this was gold dust. I had never heard anything like this before. My mind rolled, and I felt a thrill of excitement.
Fifteen minutes earlier, when we'd first arrived at the church, I'd actually been feeling a little low. We'd just been subjected to the flat-lining pulse of Honingham St Andrew, and so to find another locked church was depressing, even though it had a keyholder notice. Through the magic of the OS street atlas of Norfolk we found the house where the keyholder lived; but when I knocked on the door, there was no answer. I waited and waited while Peter turned the car around. The house wasn't far from the church, but it was on the far side of the A47, which no pedestrian crosses safely. And I waited, and I thought to myself, I wonder if there's a key hanging up somewhere? Because some keyholders keep the key hanging up outside for other parishioners to use. And just as I thought I might look for it, the door opened.
Within moments, I knew that I was in the presence of one of Norfolk's great eccentrics, which is saying something, because in this day and age the county may well have cornered the market, at least as far as England goes. And before we left Hockering, which would be fully two hours in the future, I would know that, thanks to this friendly, candid man, if any church in Norfolk is to survive the next quarter of a century it will be Hockering.
He invited us in to his house while he looked for the key, but what had surprised him was that we had found his house at all. Because that lot yesterday had phoned him up and said they couldn't find his street, and asked him for the post code of the church so they could put it in the SatNav, and then they could let the SatNav direct their car to the church, and he laughed and said there was no need, he'd meet them there, and the church was easy to find because it was the big thing that looked like a church.
He'd got to the church, and they were waiting. Three clergyman and a woman who saw things other people couldn't see, felt things they couldn't feel. And she'd wandered around, poking in corners, and she found all these cold spots. There'd been one in the porch, and one by the font, and several in the vestry. Worst of all, up in the west gallery she'd sensed a screaming skull. That was the motherlode as far as evil was concerned, and the exorcism team sprang into action.
I made up my mind that, more than anything, I wanted to go up into the west gallery and sense the screaming skull. We got to the churchyard, but the porch was out of commission and cordoned off. It wasn't clear if this was due to falling masonry or demonic possession. Instead, we were let into the chancel, through the Priest's door.
Hockering chancel is an opulent 19th century refurbishment quite out of character with the rest of the church. The chancel arch and its matching stone reredos in particular are textbook examples of the international mid-19th century Early English style, familiar to church explorers from Vancouver to Calcutta and beyond. The arch in particular must have cost a fortune. Fortunately, the Victorians used the old bench ends for the stalls, or perhaps they had simply run out of money by then. Certainly, the 1890s rood screen does not match the stonework for quality.
However, west of the chancel arch is a small nave with a north aisle, and it is full of local character, with an air of the centuries conspiring, through a mixture of care and neglect, to leave us something unique. And best of all is Hockering's wonderful font. It sits beneath the George III royal arms on the front of the west gallery, and it soon distracted me from searching for skulls. The bowl is Victorian and perfunctory; the shaft is medieval, and wonderful.
It depicts eight Saints, standing in niches. Their heads were whacked off by 16th century protestants, and have since been replaced, but they are in the main in good condition, beautifully clear and identifiable. They include St Michael, St Andrew, St Margaret, St Catherine, St Christopher and the Blessed Virgin and child.
It has to be said that the interior of St Michael is slightly ramshackle, though pleasantly so. It is, however, very clean. This is because the keyholder has been systematically working his way through the building, cleaning and sealing dusty surfaces, polishing the wood and scraping the muck off the stone. So far, it has taken him almost two years of daily work, and he still isn't quite finished. Now, England is full of people who love their parish church, but it is rare to meet someone who so wholeheartedly backs up this love with the sheer sweat of his brow, and I admired what he was doing here immensely.
The majority of the benches in the nave are late medieval, with simple, carved poppyheads. At the front, a box pew bears the arms of the Berney family, who are one of the long-established stars in the firmament of Norfolk landowners. By the 13th and 14th centuries they were busy organising the peasantry in these parts, as well as elsewhere in Norfolk. Incredibly, they still live at Hockering Hall, the current incarnation of which is a modernist building of the 1950s.
And St Michael, which is by no means one of Norfolk's more significant churches, is still their church, and their patronage still falls heavily here. The current family attend the church every Sunday, and they form a significant proportion of the tiny congregation. I thought that this was wonderful, like something out of an Evelyn Waugh novel. Apparently, it is still the job of the churchwarden to make sure that nobody else sits in the Berney pew. A few months back, someone they hadn't seen before arrived early for the evening service, and sat down in it. There was a collective sharp intake of breath from the half dozen or so locals sitting behind, and the stranger had to be turfed out and rehoused in the cheaper seats.
Mortlock, visiting in the early 1980s, said that there was an air here of a church not being forgotten, but not cherished either. He'd probably say the same today, but I think this is simply because of the junkshop atmosphere of a quirky church with much of interest and more than a little rustic character. Typical of the quirkiness is the brass to Humphrey Smallpece,it reads Milleno, Quingenteno Anno ter quique deno et nono Domini, dum Rex Henricus et annum primum post deno tres regni Octavus agebat, Hic evit Humpfridus Smallpece aestate sepultus. This translates as 'In the summer of the year 1539, as King Henry VIII began the 31st year of his reign, Humphrey Smallpece died, and was buried here'. This is curious, because it means that here we have an inscription from the very earliest stages of the English Reformation, when England was still a Catholic country, and yet it is entirely secular.
At last, we went up into the gallery. It has been built into the splay of the west window, and is approached via the tower stairs, but it is too rickety to be used by the public anymore. It is cluttered with equipment - a lawnmower, planters, and old books under a carpet of dust. No screaming skulls, though. The keyholder could see in our faces that we thought it untidy, and he laughed. "This is what the rest of the church used to be like", he observed.
Finally, something genuinely extraordinary. Hockering parish possesses some 16th century plate, including an exquisite silver paten with the head of Christ in the centre. This can be dated accurately from a will bequest of 1520. There is also a cup of 1570, post-Reformation of course, bearing the inscription HOKRYNG TOWN. These are now kept in safe storage in Norwich, not at the church, but they had recently been returned to the parish from an exhibition, and were due to go back to Norwich later that afternoon. Our friendly keyholder produced them with a flourish for us to look at and photograph - tremendous treasures from a world ago, now rarely exposed to the light of day.
So, that was Hockering. We took the kindly keyholder home, and headed on to the relative sanity of the Wensum group of parishes to the north. As we drove, I was thinking about the Berney pew, Noel Coward's chorus running through my head:
The Stately Church of England, how beautiful it stands,
To prove the upper classes have still the upper hand
and wondered to myself if, when I came to write about Hockering, I should mention the exorcists. The thing is, I get an increasing number of crank e-mails from people claiming to represent organisations with wacky names like the Suffolk Paranormal Society, and the North Essex Ghost Hunters. They ask me if I know of any haunted churches for them to investigate. My answer, in the days when I still bothered to answer them, was no, of course I don't. How on earth could a functioning, welcoming, prayerful church possibly be haunted? I fear they may now and try and get their talons into Hockering, and it will be partly my fault. All I can say is that there are now no ghosts at Hockering, and I don't believe that there ever were.
This is a tea room in Greenwich,London. I love the fact that they have made the style without real effort but mix all kinds of colour, texture together and u got such the gorgeous combination.
Washing windscreens in Rome. She was happy to have her portrait taken and we contributed to her day's takings.
Pigment print on paper by PHUNK and Keiichi Tanaami during Superfluous Things : Paper exhibition at SAM @Tanjong Pagar Distripark.
The eccentric, eclectic, technicolor garden entrance to the Papermoon Diner in Baltimore. It's a great place to eat and my kids loved it when we visited in August. They loved looking at everything on the walls.
The eccentric fusion ax is a small and almost delicate melee weapon. small boosters in the back of theweapon alow it to be swung with a controlable amount of speed. Do not handle this weapon around fragile equipment
~Usually when I can't come up with something for the topic I just skip it, however today I was sure this would be an easy one . . . boy was I wrong!! I tried, I really really REALLY did.
ODC2: Eccentric
Nikon D700 & 50mm lens
Where would we be without our eccentrics? Here resteth Major Peter Labelliere, who departed this life in 1800 at the age of 75 – and who insisted on being buried vertically, head first.
This headstone marks the spot. It’s on Box Hill – one of Surrey’s finest beauty spots which offers stunning panoramic views across the Weald towards the south coast of England.
Labelliere, who lived in nearby Dorking, chose to be buried head first “because, as the world is turned upside down on Judgement Day, only I will be the correct way up”.
Not only that, but apparently he also asked that his landlady’s two young children should be allowed to dance on his coffin, to demonstrate that funerals weren’t sombre affairs. According to the National Trust, which owns Box Hill, this wasn’t felt to be in the best possible taste; only the boy complied, while the little girl merely sat on the coffin!
Don'y let age catch up to you. Dress as you please! Enjoy yourself! Show off! Do not take heed to the old adage of "dressing your age."
Life is too short to do otherwise :)
St Michael, Hockering, Norfolk
I had long looked forward to coming back to Hockering. When I did it was to the pleasure of a church stunningly cared for, after many years of decay. I had witnessed the start of this TLC some ten years before, when I had the privilege to meet one of the great Norfolk eccentrics, one of the truly memorable characters of my journey around the churches of East Anglia. Sadly, it seems that he is no longer with us.
In 2006, I wrote: We came to Hockering the morning after the second exorcism. I couldn't honestly say that all was calm. It was a day of sunshine and blizzards, when the light first dazzled and then submitted to a baffling of snowflakes as fat as goose feathers. We church-hopped between the flurries, catching glimpses and seeking shelter. It was a day to battle with obscurity, and as I said to Peter later, it was difficult to know where to start. First of all, perhaps, there was the screaming skull. Or was it the cold spots? There were a lot of cold spots, apparently. But none of that could have happened without the phone call about the SatNav. And then later there were the Saints, and there were the extraordinary Berneys, and there was Catholic treasure from beyond the great divide. Such a lot to remember. Perhaps it's best to start at the beginning.
St Michael, Hockering, is a small-scale work of the early 14th century, vigorously enhanced in the late 15th or early 16th century, and then, in part, enthusiastically refurbished by the Victorians in the 1850s, as we shall see. However, it still retains a lot of its decorated charm, and the tower is curious because the buttresses stop short of the later bell stage, making it look like a small head on broad shoulders. The pretty pinnacles and battlements help to alleviate this; a crowning, if you like. The church sits among fields to the west of the village, and just to the north of the main road from Norwich to the Midlands, which slices clinically through the otherwise profoundly rural landscape of central Norfolk.
We were in Peter's car, heading across the A47 to St Michael. The keyholder was in the back. He was in his fifties I suppose, a cheerful man and, as it would turn out, a kindly man. He was heavily bearded, with longish hair, as if he had intended to be on the hippy trail to India, but had ended up in Norfolk instead. He wore a leather jerkin, rubber waders and a pearl earring. We were really grateful that he was giving up his time. He told us about the lot who'd come yesterday. They'd also been grateful. They hadn't known, of course, that if they'd waited a while he'd have been there anyway. He spent hours every day at the church, because he was verger and sexton and handyman and cleaner and silver polisher and carpenter and chief cook and bottlewasher all in one. We hadn't known that either of course, but it didn't matter.
Yes, that lot yesterday had been waiting for him when he got there, and he knew straight away it was an exorcism because there'd been an exorcism five years ago, and this was just like that. And five years ago funny things had been happening; you'd take the candle stocks off the altar and lock them away, and when you were back out in the nave you'd hear a clatter, and you'd go back to the vestry and find them rolling around on the floor. But now they had this woman with them who could sense evil. She could see it, she could smell it.
I was trying very hard not to catch Peter's eye. I feared it might break the spell. I have now visited nearly 1200 churches in Norfolk and Suffolk, but this was gold dust. I had never heard anything like this before. My mind rolled, and I felt a thrill of excitement.
Fifteen minutes earlier, when we'd first arrived at the church, I'd actually been feeling a little low. We'd just been subjected to the flat-lining pulse of Honingham St Andrew, and so to find another locked church was depressing, even though it had a keyholder notice. Through the magic of the OS street atlas of Norfolk we found the house where the keyholder lived; but when I knocked on the door, there was no answer. I waited and waited while Peter turned the car around. The house wasn't far from the church, but it was on the far side of the A47, which no pedestrian crosses safely. And I waited, and I thought to myself, I wonder if there's a key hanging up somewhere? Because some keyholders keep the key hanging up outside for other parishioners to use. And just as I thought I might look for it, the door opened.
Within moments, I knew that I was in the presence of one of Norfolk's great eccentrics, which is saying something, because in this day and age the county may well have cornered the market, at least as far as England goes. And before we left Hockering, which would be fully two hours in the future, I would know that, thanks to this friendly, candid man, if any church in Norfolk is to survive the next quarter of a century it will be Hockering.
He invited us in to his house while he looked for the key, but what had surprised him was that we had found his house at all. Because that lot yesterday had phoned him up and said they couldn't find his street, and asked him for the post code of the church so they could put it in the SatNav, and then they could let the SatNav direct their car to the church, and he laughed and said there was no need, he'd meet them there, and the church was easy to find because it was the big thing that looked like a church.
He'd got to the church, and they were waiting. Three clergyman and a woman who saw things other people couldn't see, felt things they couldn't feel. And she'd wandered around, poking in corners, and she found all these cold spots. There'd been one in the porch, and one by the font, and several in the vestry. Worst of all, up in the west gallery she'd sensed a screaming skull. That was the motherlode as far as evil was concerned, and the exorcism team sprang into action.
I made up my mind that, more than anything, I wanted to go up into the west gallery and sense the screaming skull. We got to the churchyard, but the porch was out of commission and cordoned off. It wasn't clear if this was due to falling masonry or demonic possession. Instead, we were let into the chancel, through the Priest's door.
Hockering chancel is an opulent 19th century refurbishment quite out of character with the rest of the church. The chancel arch and its matching stone reredos in particular are textbook examples of the international mid-19th century Early English style, familiar to church explorers from Vancouver to Calcutta and beyond. The arch in particular must have cost a fortune. Fortunately, the Victorians used the old bench ends for the stalls, or perhaps they had simply run out of money by then. Certainly, the 1890s rood screen does not match the stonework for quality.
However, west of the chancel arch is a small nave with a north aisle, and it is full of local character, with an air of the centuries conspiring, through a mixture of care and neglect, to leave us something unique. And best of all is Hockering's wonderful font. It sits beneath the George III royal arms on the front of the west gallery, and it soon distracted me from searching for skulls. The bowl is Victorian and perfunctory; the shaft is medieval, and wonderful.
It depicts eight Saints, standing in niches. Their heads were whacked off by 16th century protestants, and have since been replaced, but they are in the main in good condition, beautifully clear and identifiable. They include St Michael, St Andrew, St Margaret, St Catherine, St Christopher and the Blessed Virgin and child.
It has to be said that the interior of St Michael is slightly ramshackle, though pleasantly so. It is, however, very clean. This is because the keyholder has been systematically working his way through the building, cleaning and sealing dusty surfaces, polishing the wood and scraping the muck off the stone. So far, it has taken him almost two years of daily work, and he still isn't quite finished. Now, England is full of people who love their parish church, but it is rare to meet someone who so wholeheartedly backs up this love with the sheer sweat of his brow, and I admired what he was doing here immensely.
The majority of the benches in the nave are late medieval, with simple, carved poppyheads. At the front, a box pew bears the arms of the Berney family, who are one of the long-established stars in the firmament of Norfolk landowners. By the 13th and 14th centuries they were busy organising the peasantry in these parts, as well as elsewhere in Norfolk. Incredibly, they still live at Hockering Hall, the current incarnation of which is a modernist building of the 1950s.
And St Michael, which is by no means one of Norfolk's more significant churches, is still their church, and their patronage still falls heavily here. The current family attend the church every Sunday, and they form a significant proportion of the tiny congregation. I thought that this was wonderful, like something out of an Evelyn Waugh novel. Apparently, it is still the job of the churchwarden to make sure that nobody else sits in the Berney pew. A few months back, someone they hadn't seen before arrived early for the evening service, and sat down in it. There was a collective sharp intake of breath from the half dozen or so locals sitting behind, and the stranger had to be turfed out and rehoused in the cheaper seats.
Mortlock, visiting in the early 1980s, said that there was an air here of a church not being forgotten, but not cherished either. He'd probably say the same today, but I think this is simply because of the junkshop atmosphere of a quirky church with much of interest and more than a little rustic character. Typical of the quirkiness is the brass to Humphrey Smallpece,it reads Milleno, Quingenteno Anno ter quique deno et nono Domini, dum Rex Henricus et annum primum post deno tres regni Octavus agebat, Hic evit Humpfridus Smallpece aestate sepultus. This translates as 'In the summer of the year 1539, as King Henry VIII began the 31st year of his reign, Humphrey Smallpece died, and was buried here'. This is curious, because it means that here we have an inscription from the very earliest stages of the English Reformation, when England was still a Catholic country, and yet it is entirely secular.
At last, we went up into the gallery. It has been built into the splay of the west window, and is approached via the tower stairs, but it is too rickety to be used by the public anymore. It is cluttered with equipment - a lawnmower, planters, and old books under a carpet of dust. No screaming skulls, though. The keyholder could see in our faces that we thought it untidy, and he laughed. "This is what the rest of the church used to be like", he observed.
Finally, something genuinely extraordinary. Hockering parish possesses some 16th century plate, including an exquisite silver paten with the head of Christ in the centre. This can be dated accurately from a will bequest of 1520. There is also a cup of 1570, post-Reformation of course, bearing the inscription HOKRYNG TOWN. These are now kept in safe storage in Norwich, not at the church, but they had recently been returned to the parish from an exhibition, and were due to go back to Norwich later that afternoon. Our friendly keyholder produced them with a flourish for us to look at and photograph - tremendous treasures from a world ago, now rarely exposed to the light of day.
So, that was Hockering. We took the kindly keyholder home, and headed on to the relative sanity of the Wensum group of parishes to the north. As we drove, I was thinking about the Berney pew, Noel Coward's chorus running through my head:
The Stately Church of England, how beautiful it stands,
To prove the upper classes have still the upper hand
and wondered to myself if, when I came to write about Hockering, I should mention the exorcists. The thing is, I get an increasing number of crank e-mails from people claiming to represent organisations with wacky names like the Suffolk Paranormal Society, and the North Essex Ghost Hunters. They ask me if I know of any haunted churches for them to investigate. My answer, in the days when I still bothered to answer them, was no, of course I don't. How on earth could a functioning, welcoming, prayerful church possibly be haunted? I fear they may now and try and get their talons into Hockering, and it will be partly my fault. All I can say is that there are now no ghosts at Hockering, and I don't believe that there ever were.
Loom woven prismacolor drawing with novelty yarns and knotting, 20" x 21.5". Collaboration using Linda Pearson's drawing. 2022.
see detail www.flickr.com/photos/dembicer/52147457072
Okay, so here we have the Sony Nex-7 connected to a Canon TS-E 24mm lens using the Metabones converter.
It's also my 1st attempt at using focus stacking to produce a sharp image from back to front all frames shot at f/2.8 using my Canon EF 50mm prime f/1.8 MKII.
This was done after uploading the Magic Lantern firmware, which boots off the memory card and provides a massive amount of features including focus stacking, upto 9 frames of exposure bracketing and an intervalometer to name a few. (Thanks to 'AtilaTheHun' for wording me up on this).
The next portrait addition to my on going project based on personal photographs taken of the cast of characters from various Renaissance Festivals and Scottish Highland Games. 5x7 oil on panel.
Interesting story behind this one. I was walking to my car, when I spotted this curious man reading his newspaper. He had his shoes ten feet away in a bicycle basket. Here he was, buried in a newspaper, socked footed.
Why would someone be so bold as to leave his shoes so far away?
“I am not eccentric. It's just that I am more alive than most people. I am an unpopular electric eel set in a pond of catfish.” ― Edith Sitwell
I didn't know Guanghzou would be so interesting: originally we came to see Kaiping towers, and so we did. Eccentric reinforced concrete fortresses from the 1920's standing amid rice paddies were indeed mind-blowing. More about the towers is here.
We hit Zili on a new year's day. It looked almost completely abandoned, except that Cantopop blasted from inside some of the fortresses, and the cannonades of firecrackers evoked the tumultuous past of this land.