View allAll Photos Tagged get_and
Congratulations to everyone who worked hard to make a commitment to getting and staying in shape during the 2018 Biggest Loser Challenge.
(Photos by Karl Weisel)
Jaisalmer, the golden city
Jaisalmer is so far our favorite city in Rajasthan. Founded in 1156, it’s the second oldest fort in Rajasthan, prospering from its strategic position along the silk route. Today the city’s economy is built on tourism and huge military camps, due to the close proximity to the Pakistani border.
The fort and surrounding town are built from the same golden-honey sandstone and many building, even newly erected ones, are decorated with beautiful stone carvings. The fort itself is unique as a living urban center, with about 4’000 people having their home within the fort. It’s a maze of small alleys, temples, little shops, restaurants, cows and people, surrounded by a thick wall with 99 bastions. It‘s a perfect place to wander the streets for a day and drink lemon lassis.
In the afternoon we have a short camel ride in the Thar desert. There is a small band of sand dunes 40k outside the city, with a well developed infrastructure to get and stay there. It mostly feels like a big sandbox full of camels, picknicking families, selfie-taking tourists, and locals selling drinks and snacks. We record it as been there, done that and drive back to the city to look at the fort while the sun sets.
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A martial arts education of intelligent curriculum curated by Sensei Dan Rominski at his martial art school located in Rutherford NJ. Visit our website www.thedojo.org Self-Defense for children at (201) 933-3050 or email SenseiDan@TheDOJO.org
Visit our website www.thedojo.org
Children Learn Focus, Discipline, Self-Control, Concentration, Fitness, Confidence, Respect, Have Better Self-Esteem, Healthy Eating and Self-Defense.
Adults Learn How to get and stay in shape, Stress Release, Fitness, Healthy Eating, Slow start program (come as you are), a coach in every class, Confidence, Focus, Self-Discipline, Positive Peer Group and it’s Fun!
Parents, Download your FREE Report The 7 Steps for Parents: Preventing Childhood Sexual Abuse Click HERE to visit our website
danrominski.squarespace.com/c...|/sexual-abuse-prevention
Sensei Dan is available for Scheduled TALKS & PRESENTATIONS.
Get more information about our Martial Arts Education of Intelligent Curriculum involving Everything Self-Defense at TheDOJO located in Rutherford NJ.
Contact Chief Instructor: Owner Sensei Dan Rominski at (201) 933-3050 or email SenseiDan@TheDOJO.org
Visit our website www.TheDOJO.org
TheDOJO - 52 Park Avenue, Rutherford, NJ 07070 - Phone: (201) 933-3050 - Text us for info here: (201) 838-4177
Our e-mail address: SenseiDan@TheDOJO.org - Our Facebook page: Like us at TheDOJO or Friend us DanRominski
Youtube Channel: www.youtube.com/user/DanRominski - Our Twitter www.twitter.com/danrominski
Instagram: www.instagram.com/danrominski
A link to where our school is on Google Maps: www.google.com/maps/place/TheD......
If you live in the Rutherford, NJ area and would like to inquire about our programs, reach out to us at the phone and/or e-mail or text addresses above. -Sensei Dan
Read our Blog at senseidanromisnki.blogspot.com...
Read our blog at www.DanRominski.Tumblr.com
We Teach Children, Teens and Adults from Rutherford, NJ; East Rutherford, NJ; Carlstadt, NJ; Kearny, NJ; Lyndhurst, NJ; Woodridge, NJ; Hackensack, NJ; Belleville, NJ; Bloomfield, NJ; Nutley, NJ; Clifton, NJ; Montclair, NJ; and surrounding areas.
No Matter The Martial Art we’ll help you accomplish your goals through our expertise or help you find a school that will best suit you.
Karate, Judo, Jujutsu, Juijitsu, Jiu-jitsu, Goju Ryu, Shorin Ryu, Kendo, Iaido, Aikido, Mixed Martial Arts, Grappling, Daito Ryu Aiki Jujutsu, Ryukyu Okinawa Kobudo, Shorin Ryu, TKD, Tae Kwon Do
Donald is just about as far away from any extraneous light as you can get and the night sky is a wonder. This photo shows the Southern Cross (highlighted by a note) and surrounding stars in the 'Milky Way".
Catch Report - Braughing 19/07/12 - 1x 125w MV Robinson Trap
Well, i'm nearly at the end of trapping regularly on the farm with just a few more nights up until Tuesday to give it a last shot for something new.
Luckily the weather will be on my side for once!
Last night produced a staggering amounts of moths, even more than the previous night with highlights being Waved Black and Slender Brindle.
Rufous Minor was new for me and the farm after being dissected by Colin today.
Agapeta zoegana was a nice micro to get and one I hardly see.
The Footmen are out in force now with high numbers of both Common and Scarce.
Catch Report - Braughing 18/07/12 - 1x 125w MV Robinson Trap and 1x 160w MBT Robinson Trap
Macro Moths
1x Rufous Minor [NEW!]
1x Slender Brindle [NFY]
1x Slender Pug [NFY]
1x Waved Black [NFY]
21x Scarce Footman
72x Common Footman
3x Snout
19x Uncertain
5x Mottled Rustic
24x Dark Arches
1x Maple Prominent
1x Single-dotted Wave
5x Peppered Moth
1x Engrailed
1x Brimstone Moth
3x Heart & Dart
3x Beautiful Hook-tip
2x Riband Wave
5x Large Yellow Underwing
1x Dwarf Cream Wave
4x Common Rustic
10x Double Square-spot
4x Clay
1x Ghost Moth
2x Small Fan-footed Wave
2x Scalloped Oak
4x Light Arches
1x Rustic
2x Flame
2x Setaceous Hebrew Character
1x Poplar Grey
1x Smoky Wainscot
1x Green Pug
1x Double-striped Pug
1x Common Wainscot
1x Clouded Border
1x Swallow-tailed Moth
1x White Satin
2x Blood-vein
1x Burnished Brass
2x Poplar Hawk-moth
1x Buff Arches
5x Broad-bordered Yellow Underwing
2x Willow Beauty
1x Buff-tip
2x Yellow Shell
1x Dot Moth
3x Privet Hawk-moth
1x Eyed Hawk-moth
1x July Highflyer
1x Bright-line Brown-eye
1x Bordered Beauty
1x Lesser Yellow Underwing
1x Latticed Heath
2x Cinnabar
Micro Moths
1x Agapeta zoegana [NFY]
1x Catoptria pinella [NFY]
1x Strawberry Tortrix Acleris comariana [NFY]
1x Timothy Tortrix Aphelia paleana [NFY]
1x Phlyctaenia coronata [NFY]
1x Cydia splendana [NFY]
1x Lozotaeniodes formosanus [NFY]
2x Aethes cnicana
1x Aethes rubigana
1x Monochroa palustrella
1x Diamond-back Moth Plutella xylostella
1x Clepsis consimilana
1x Epiblema sp
2x Bee Moth Aphomia sociella
1x Zeiraphera isertana
3x Mother of Pearl Pleuroptya ruralis
2x Bud Moth Spilonota ocellana
1x Udea olivalis
3x Coleophora sp
1x Metzneria lappella
3x Bryotropha terrella
2x Orthopygia glaucinalis
7x Agapeta hamana
1x Batia unitella
36x Chrysoteuchia culmella
1x Phycita roborella
7x Celypha striana
3x Dipleurina lacustrata
1x Barred Fruit-tree Tortrix Pandemis cerasana
1x Rush Veneer Nomophila noctuella
1x Blastobasis laticolella
1x Large Fruit-tree Tortrix Archips podana
2x Endotricha flammealis
1x Ringed China-mark Parapoynx stratiotata
8x Cnephasia sp
1x Ephestia parasitella
11x Eucosma cana
1x Homoeosoma sinuella
3x Eudonia mercurella
1x Bramble Shoot Moth Epiblema uddmanniana
2x Phycitodes sp
8x Celypha lacunana
3x Crambus perlella
2x Marbled Orchard Tortrix Hedya nubiferana
2x White Plume Moth Pterophorus pentadactyla
1x Small Magpie Eurrhypara hortulata
9x Catoptria falsella
Thank you to Whitney, my swap partner for our Good Mail Day Swap!
I wish I could have captured my reaction when I opened this box and saw nothing but beautiful yarn cakes!
What I received:
-allergy-free apple cookies (not shown...I didn't have enough hands to hold them!)
-Coffee beans from her local coffee roaster. They smell divine :)
-Liberty of London journals, which made me squeal b/c I was sort of feeling left out of the loop after everyone else found LoL stuff :)
-The Yarn:
- Malabrigo worsted in Velvet Grapes, Sapphire Green, and Water Green
- Socks that Rock Medium-weight in an awesome green that I shall refer to as
The Perfect Green Sock Yarn
- a skein of brown local alpaca yarn
Oh, and a card in which Whitney definitely sent some warm sunshine to Alaska :)
Thanks so much, W! And thanks again to Elinor for organizing The First Annual Good Mail Day Swap, and to Danielle for taking charge and doing the rest.
I can't wait to see what everyone else gets and sends!!!
Kara Walker is about as in your face as an artist can get and not just be offensive for the sake of offensiveness.
This was the best I could get, and still could not get the red cap, but you can see a little detail.
I’ve been looking forward to sharing this session for a while, as it’s such a great “real life” example of family portraits with young toddlers. You know, sometimes they just don’t want to sit still for even one second, and that’s ok!
I really admired the way these parents gently tried redirecting their toddler without a hint of frustration. They were fully aware of the kinds of shots we were getting, and not getting, and it didn’t phase them one bit. You'll have to head over to the photo blog, to see some of my favorite behind-the-scenes parenting photos.
They left me these kind words in their review: "Dani was so professional, thoughtful, and flexible for our family pictures. She made every step of the way easy for us. Even when weather impacted our plans, she thought of creative solutions and made sure we got what we wanted. Highest recommendation!!!"
.
More on the blog:
A martial arts education of intelligent curriculum curated by Sensei Dan Rominski at his martial art school located in Rutherford NJ. Visit our website www.thedojo.org Self-Defense for children at (201) 933-3050 or email SenseiDan@TheDOJO.org
Visit our website www.thedojo.org
Children Learn Focus, Discipline, Self-Control, Concentration, Fitness, Confidence, Respect, Have Better Self-Esteem, Healthy Eating and Self-Defense.
Adults Learn How to get and stay in shape, Stress Release, Fitness, Healthy Eating, Slow start program (come as you are), a coach in every class, Confidence, Focus, Self-Discipline, Positive Peer Group and it’s Fun!
Parents, Download your FREE Report The 7 Steps for Parents: Preventing Childhood Sexual Abuse Click HERE to visit our website
danrominski.squarespace.com/c...|/sexual-abuse-prevention
Sensei Dan is available for Scheduled TALKS & PRESENTATIONS.
Get more information about our Martial Arts Education of Intelligent Curriculum involving Everything Self-Defense at TheDOJO located in Rutherford NJ.
Contact Chief Instructor: Owner Sensei Dan Rominski at (201) 933-3050 or email SenseiDan@TheDOJO.org
Visit our website www.TheDOJO.org
TheDOJO - 52 Park Avenue, Rutherford, NJ 07070 - Phone: (201) 933-3050 - Text us for info here: (201) 838-4177
Our e-mail address: SenseiDan@TheDOJO.org - Our Facebook page: Like us at TheDOJO or Friend us DanRominski
Youtube Channel: www.youtube.com/user/DanRominski - Our Twitter www.twitter.com/danrominski
Instagram: www.instagram.com/danrominski
A link to where our school is on Google Maps: www.google.com/maps/place/TheD......
If you live in the Rutherford, NJ area and would like to inquire about our programs, reach out to us at the phone and/or e-mail or text addresses above. -Sensei Dan
Read our Blog at senseidanromisnki.blogspot.com...
Read our blog at www.DanRominski.Tumblr.com
We Teach Children, Teens and Adults from Rutherford, NJ; East Rutherford, NJ; Carlstadt, NJ; Kearny, NJ; Lyndhurst, NJ; Woodridge, NJ; Hackensack, NJ; Belleville, NJ; Bloomfield, NJ; Nutley, NJ; Clifton, NJ; Montclair, NJ; and surrounding areas.
No Matter The Martial Art we’ll help you accomplish your goals through our expertise or help you find a school that will best suit you.
Karate, Judo, Jujutsu, Juijitsu, Jiu-jitsu, Goju Ryu, Shorin Ryu, Kendo, Iaido, Aikido, Mixed Martial Arts, Grappling, Daito Ryu Aiki Jujutsu, Ryukyu Okinawa Kobudo, Shorin Ryu, TKD, Tae Kwon Do
The Luxury of being yourself
We have selected pictures on our website, but can always add more depending on the requests we do get and the current trend in the world of luxury fine art:
We do wedding photography and videography:
We do once in a while have discounted luxury fine art, please do keep checking:
Fine Art Photography Prints & Luxury Wall Art:
We do come up with merchandises over the years, but at the moment we have sold out and will bring them back depending on the demands of our past customers and those we do take on daily across the globe.
Follow us on Instagram!
Facebook:
www.facebook.com/william.stone.989/
500px:
500px.com/p/wsimages?view=photos
Twitter:
LinkedIn:
www.linkedin.com/in/william-stone-6bab1a213/
Pinterest:
www.pinterest.co.uk/wsimages_com/
Smugmug:
Instagram:
We tend to celebrate light in our pictures. Understanding how light interacts with the camera is paramount to the work we do. The temperature, intensity and source of light can wield different photography effect on the same subject or scene; add ISO, aperture and speed, the camera, the lens type, focal length and filters…the combination is varied ad multi-layered and if you know how to use them all, you will come to appreciate that all lights are useful, even those surrounded by a lot of darkness.
We are guided by three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, our longing to capture in print, that which is beautiful, the constant search for the one picture, and constant barrage of new equipment and style of photography. These passions, like great winds, have blown us across the globe in search of the one and we do understand the one we do look for might be this picture right here for someone else out there.
“A concise poem about our work as stated elow
A place without being
a thought without thinking
creatively, two dimensions
suspended animation
possibly a perfect imitation
of what was then to see.
A frozen memory in synthetic colour
or black and white instead,
fantasy dreams in magazines
become imbedded inside my head.
Artistic views
surrealistic hues,
a photographer’s instinctive eye:
for he does as he pleases
up to that point he releases,
then develops a visual high.
- M R Abrahams
Some of the gear we use at William Stone Fine Art are listed here:
Some of our latest work & more!
Embedded galleries within a gallery on various aspects of Photography:
There are other aspects closely related to photography that we do embark on:
All prints though us is put through a rigorous set of quality control standards long before we ever ship it to your front door. We only create gallery-quality images, and you'll receive your print in perfect condition with a lifetime guarantee.
All images on Flickr have been specifically published in a lower grade quality to amber our copyright being infringed. We have 4096x pixel full sized quality on all our photos and any of them could be ordered in high grade museum quality grade and a discount applied if the voucher WS-100 is used. Please contact us:
We do plan future trips and do catalogue our past ones, if you believe there is a beautiful place we have missed, and we are sure there must be many, please do let us know and we will investigate.
In our galleries you will find some amazing fine art photography for sale as limited edition and open edition, gallery quality prints. Only the finest materials and archival methods are used to produce these stunning photographic works of art.
We want to thank you for your interest in our work and thanks for visiting our work on Flickr, we do appreciate you and the contributions you make in furthering our interest in photography and on social media in general, we are mostly out in the field or at an event making people feel luxurious about themselves.
WS-139-371096690-51184418-3428245-1952022053726
Made a pit stop at Mesa Verde. We only had part of one day to spend so we got there when it opened and left around 130 or so. Photo taken with a Canon 7D. The 7D is a new camera for me and this road trip was its inaugural trip. The lens I used here was a Canon 10-22 EFS. I had read a few good reviews on it and saw some great pics here on Flickr. I also wanted to get and bring along the 17-55 2.8 EFS. The one I purchased from a local camera store had a tiny flaw on the front element but it was right in the middle. It went back to the store! I picked up another from KEH and it was like a sandbox on the inside. Exchanged it for another and it seems like a keeper at this point.
Not the most glamorous or perfect picture of a Leopard I admit, but we were so excited to actually see a leopard in the wild.
We would never has seen this leopard if it had not been pointed out to us by other observers who stumbled upon this sighting by accident.
As they explained to us, they were watching a dry river bed, hoping to see some animals when suddenly a wild cat caught a small animal, we think a dassie, when out of nowhere the leopard appeared and stole the dassie from the wild cat. The leopard then lay in the reeds and played with the food, displaying no real interest in eating. Kinda an up yours to the wild cat!
The leopard was well camouflaged and only became visible when it occasionally flicked its tail.
It was such fun to see the leopard, unfortunately it never really exposed itself, so this is the best photo I could get, and this is at full 400mm zoom and then tightly cropped. My proof that I really did see it.
i never plan the heart when i pas the fan this is what a i get and looks like a heart!!!
Nunca planie que se formara un corazon cuando pase el ventilador esto fue lo que obtuve la forma del corazon!!
Don't use this image on websites, blogs or other media without my explicit permission
The Luxury of being yourself
We have selected pictures on our website, but can always add more depending on the requests we do get and the current trend in the world of luxury fine art:
We do once in a while have discounted luxury fine art, please do keep checking:
Fine Art Photography Prints & Luxury Wall Art:
We do come up with merchandises over the years, but at the moment we have sold out and will bring them back depending on the demands of our past customers and those we do take on daily across the globe.
Follow us on Instagram!
Facebook:
www.facebook.com/william.stone.989/
500px:
500px.com/p/wsimages?view=photos
Twitter:
We tend to celebrate light in our pictures. Understanding how light interacts with the camera is paramount to the work we do. The temperature, intensity and source of light can wield different photography effect on the same subject or scene; add ISO, aperture and speed, the camera, the lens type, focal length and filters…the combination is varied ad multi-layered and if you know how to use them all, you will come to appreciate that all lights are useful, even those surrounded by a lot of darkness.
We are guided by three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, our longing to capture in print, that which is beautiful, the constant search for the one picture, and constant barrage of new equipment and style of photography. These passions, like great winds, have blown us across the globe in search of the one and we do understand the one we do look for might be this picture right here for someone else out there.
“A concise poem about our work as stated elow
A place without being
a thought without thinking
creatively, two dimensions
suspended animation
possibly a perfect imitation
of what was then to see.
A frozen memory in synthetic colour
or black and white instead,
fantasy dreams in magazines
become imbedded inside my head.
Artistic views
surrealistic hues,
a photographer’s instinctive eye:
for he does as he pleases
up to that point he releases,
then develops a visual high.
- M R Abrahams
Some of the gear we use at William Stone Fine Art are listed here:
Some of our latest work & more!
Embedded galleries within a gallery on various aspects of Photography:
There are other aspects closely related to photography that we do embark on:
All prints though us is put through a rigorous set of quality control standards long before we ever ship it to your front door. We only create gallery-quality images, and you'll receive your print in perfect condition with a lifetime guarantee.
All images on Flickr have been specifically published in a lower grade quality to amber our copyright being infringed. We have 4096x pixel full sized quality on all our photos and any of them could be ordered in high grade museum quality grade and a discount applied if the voucher WS-100 is used. Please contact us:
We do plan future trips and do catalogue our past ones, if you believe there is a beautiful place we have missed, and we are sure there must be many, please do let us know and we will investigate.
In our galleries you will find some amazing fine art photography for sale as limited edition and open edition, gallery quality prints. Only the finest materials and archival methods are used to produce these stunning photographic works of art.
We want to thank you for your interest in our work and thanks for visiting our work on Flickr, we do appreciate you and the contributions you make in furthering our interest in photography and on social media in general, we are mostly out in the field or at an event making people feel luxurious about themselves.
And the one that started it all! Peppa Mint was the first Shoppie that I decided to get, and she is so cute!
I love these things. It's always fun to see which one I'll get and the little candy inside is tasty toooooo ♥
A martial arts education of intelligent curriculum curated by Sensei Dan Rominski at his martial art school located in Rutherford NJ. Visit our website www.thedojo.org Self-Defense for children at (201) 933-3050 or email SenseiDan@TheDOJO.org
Visit our website www.thedojo.org
Children Learn Focus, Discipline, Self-Control, Concentration, Fitness, Confidence, Respect, Have Better Self-Esteem, Healthy Eating and Self-Defense.
Adults Learn How to get and stay in shape, Stress Release, Fitness, Healthy Eating, Slow start program (come as you are), a coach in every class, Confidence, Focus, Self-Discipline, Positive Peer Group and it’s Fun!
Parents, Download your FREE Report The 7 Steps for Parents: Preventing Childhood Sexual Abuse Click HERE to visit our website
danrominski.squarespace.com/c...|/sexual-abuse-prevention
Sensei Dan is available for Scheduled TALKS & PRESENTATIONS.
Get more information about our Martial Arts Education of Intelligent Curriculum involving Everything Self-Defense at TheDOJO located in Rutherford NJ.
Contact Chief Instructor: Owner Sensei Dan Rominski at (201) 933-3050 or email SenseiDan@TheDOJO.org
Visit our website www.TheDOJO.org
TheDOJO - 52 Park Avenue, Rutherford, NJ 07070 - Phone: (201) 933-3050 - Text us for info here: (201) 838-4177
Our e-mail address: SenseiDan@TheDOJO.org - Our Facebook page: Like us at TheDOJO or Friend us DanRominski
Youtube Channel: www.youtube.com/user/DanRominski - Our Twitter www.twitter.com/danrominski
Instagram: www.instagram.com/danrominski
A link to where our school is on Google Maps: www.google.com/maps/place/TheD......
If you live in the Rutherford, NJ area and would like to inquire about our programs, reach out to us at the phone and/or e-mail or text addresses above. -Sensei Dan
Read our Blog at senseidanromisnki.blogspot.com...
Read our blog at www.DanRominski.Tumblr.com
We Teach Children, Teens and Adults from Rutherford, NJ; East Rutherford, NJ; Carlstadt, NJ; Kearny, NJ; Lyndhurst, NJ; Woodridge, NJ; Hackensack, NJ; Belleville, NJ; Bloomfield, NJ; Nutley, NJ; Clifton, NJ; Montclair, NJ; and surrounding areas.
No Matter The Martial Art we’ll help you accomplish your goals through our expertise or help you find a school that will best suit you.
Karate, Judo, Jujutsu, Juijitsu, Jiu-jitsu, Goju Ryu, Shorin Ryu, Kendo, Iaido, Aikido, Mixed Martial Arts, Grappling, Daito Ryu Aiki Jujutsu, Ryukyu Okinawa Kobudo, Shorin Ryu, TKD, Tae Kwon Do
I really like the detail I was able to get and the glow effect on the lettering from condensation.
Taken with the stock camera app on my Galaxy S6.
I love photographing empty shops, of which there are sadly many. It's interesting what shapes you get and items left behind.
Here are the results of playing our new favorite game at my and Matt's birthday party. Called "Eat Poop You Cat" by some, we've rechristened it "Drunk Ninja Puppets Play Candyland." It's an "Exquisite Corpse" style of game. However, instead of one large drawing, participants alternate between text and images. The first person starts a long strip of paper with a phrase. The second makes a drawing based on the phrase, then folds the top of the paper back, so the original phrase is no longer visible. Then, the next person writes a phrase based on what they think the drawing is expressing. Then they fold back the drawing so only their phrase is passed on. The next must make a drawing and so forth. It is hilarious to see how mangled some ideas get and how well others hold up.
Got a new guide for you guys that are playing Genshin Impact. Within 5 minutes you can get and infinite intertwined fates within your account in the game. As we all know primogems and intertwined fates is a must in-game currency to have in order to summon 4 to 5 star characters as well as weapons within the game. So if you lack this resources you will have some problems in getting the characters and weapon you like. If you like to play Spiral Abyss you know, that you will need powerful characters starting from floor 5 and above.
So please, do watch this video and follow all the step by step guide in order for this to work into your Genshin Impact account. Be assured if you follow it correctly you will get lots of intertwined fate.
Official Site: appmonarch.com/genshinimpact/
Film shot, BW, Pentax MX, 50mm.
Laneway Festival Singapore 2013 - Overall a disappointment, again queues were too long and water supply lacking. Paying 5 dollars for a 200ml bottle of Fiji water after waiting 45 minutes is lame, especially when water bottles were confiscated at the door. Obviously none of the 160 buck ticket price went on hospitality, because there was none. The organisers should be ashamed, putting revenue above safety, how can water be so hard to get, and why in such small quantities. There were many other issues with the event but I can't be bothered detailing them here. Really frustrating experience as a festival goer.
From the view you can see; The Brisons is a twin-peaked islet in the Celtic Sea situated 1 mile offshore from Cape Cornwall in Cornwall, United Kingdom. Wikipedia
These photographs were taken from the footpath leading from the Youth Hostel car park to the beach at Porth Nanven. The sat nav should have taken us to Porth Nanven via St Just, which would have been on a tarmac road taking us straight to the car park only a few yards from the beach. This very uneven footpath took us to some huge granite rocks on the coastal path where I had to remain as it was too steep for me to climb down to the beach to take photos. So off Jim went as he is fitter than me, but he told me afterwards that even if I had reached the beach I would not have been able to climb over the rocks to take any photos as it far too dangerous for me. I was a little disappointed but it was not raining and there were some beautiful landscape shots I could get, and I had company of a local man who was walking a friend’s dog and was telling me about the local area.
I shot this a couple years back on a trip I had to make to Ireland. This is out on the west side north of the Cliffs of Moehr. The countryside there is really breathtaking and a must to add to your travel wish list. I've never been out east towards Dublin though I would like to check it out some time. I've been on the west side 4 times and from what I hear it's more traditional than the west side. The castles and ruins are all over the place. I typically would just plan some circular route and just drive until I saw something interesting which meant I stopped quite often.
I hope you enjoy today's post. If you like what you see the greatest compliment you could give me is to share this with others. I appreciate all the feedback, comments and 'likes' I get and read and respond to every one of them.
- Noah Katz
Hit 'L' and check this out on black. It really stands out great.
If your interested in purchasing anything you like or would like to check out my full portfolio, please stop by www.maugiart.com
Read more here at the Maugiart blog. If you like my photos please make them your favorites. Thanks!
Please follow me on Twitter @noahjasonkatz as well or Google Plus
If your on Facebook please 'Like' my MaugiArt Photography page.
Thank you for taking the time to check out my photos.
Comments are greatly appreciated.
fgr: jumping. This is as jumpy as I get and I do like to dance around.
quote....
Friendship with ones self is all important, because without it one cannot be friends with anyone else in the world.
-Eleanor Roosevelt
B/W - with a touch of color... I too like to ride the line...
Damn I think there was something else... oh yes. HNT. I did it is my skivvies.
* WebGoo the most easy way to open many browsing windows in one window.
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More snow again today.
Not nearly what folks North of us or in the Northeast of the US are getting and have been getting.
My bride Karen went to a nice new restaurant tonight. The chef/owner is 23 years old. By the looks, tastes and crowds, I think it's a hit!
I walked from work, as it's just 2 blocks from me in the lobby of an old hotel - the Saint Nicholas - long since turned into apartments. The space was empty for ages until this place popped up right before the new year began.
Eclectic and savory tastes. For example, I had meatloaf, entitled: "Not Your Mama's Meatloaf" with ground lamb.
We topped of the dinner by moving to a couch/chair setting in another part of the dining room and splitting a blueberry-pecan pie.
Karen took me back to my car, and I started scraping the snow off that had fallen during the day. About 2 inches+ worth.
A fitting photo of the day.
There is a point in our lives when we, the children, become the adults in the relationship with our parents.
It will come for most of us, no one tells you this will happen, and you are unprepared for it. But it comes
And each of us has a different relationship with our parents than everyone else, what's right for me, and my views, do not apply to you.
Yesterday, was the funeral of the person I have known longer than anyone else on this earth, now that my family is all gone. Margaret and Brian were married a few weeks before mine, and moved into the new build bungalow also a few weeks before my parents.
They also had one child, a son, and Douglas and I have been friends longer than I have been friends with anyone else, although he is a year younger than me.
I have my views on Margaret, but the reason I travelled back to Suffolk for her funeral, was to be there for Douggie, and give him the support he has given me through three weddings and two funerals.
Norfolk isn't far away, and the funeral and wake were taking place just a mile or two over the border from Suffolk, but the roads beyond Ipswich are poor, twisty and where there are accidents or roadworks, no real alternative routes.
I was also leaving just before six, so had to get across the Thames at Dartford and up the A12 during rush hour, so it wouldn't be easy. But at least there would be no rain.
I was up at five, dressed and washed, with time to drink a coffee before leaving. Loading the car with me and my camera bag, as I had plans in case I had time, to visit a church or two.
It was dark up the M20 to Dartford, and busy with traffic, but I made good time, and listened to a loop of old music podcasts all day, so chat and music kept me awake.
I got onto the M25 with no problem, and through the tunnels with only a slight slowdown, but on the other side there were queues.
Despite not wanting to spend money on a new railway, there is always money for road and junction improvements, even if it will just increase traffic. So it is that the M25/A12 junction is being upgraded, and with narrow lanes, speed restrictions, jams began a good four miles before the roadworks started.
I forced my way to the left hand lane, which became a filter lane, meaning it was much quicker than the remaining four lanes. But then came the roundabout. The roundabout under the motorway is the reason the improvements are needed, and queueing traffic blocks the junctions and causes even more backlogs.
Of course, traffic lights on roundabouts are never good ideas, so I was confronted with a wall of traffic, so when the light went green, I went in front of a track before it could shuffle forward and block more of the junction, then there was some clear road.
And ducking into the extreme left hand lane, I dodged past the queuing traffic that was blocking the exit from the A12, and onto clear road.
Yay.
The sky was clear, the sun about to rise, and it was going to be a glorious day.
Just north of Chelmsford, I stopped for breakfast: two sausage rolls and a coffee from Greggs, then filled up the tank and on my way north.
More traffic at Ipswich where the A12 meets the A14 to get over the Orwell, but then clear traffic again after ten minutes delay.
Soon, though, the road narrows to two lane blacktop, and all is well until you meet a slower vehicle. Like a tractor as we did soon after Whickham Market.
For 15 long minutes the tractor lead a growing snake of cars along the winding lanes until it pulled over and we could get past.
Blythburgh was always the marker when travelling back from Ipswich or beyond, that we were nearly home. he handsome church sits high, for Suffolk, overlooking the village and river which is mostly mudflats.
The busy A12 skirts close, but you get to the church via a narrow land, leaving the modern world far behind.
The church opened at nine, it was nearly half past, it was probably open before nine, and was open when I pushed the porch door.
Inside is an unspoilt space, grey wood that have witnessed the centuries so that their vigour has faded to almost no colour of all.
Its the roof people come for. Wooden beams and pairs of wooden angels. I have brought my big lens so to snap them.
My plan was to visit the large and impressive church in Southwold. I turned off the A12 and drove along the straight road into the town, where I found multiple sets of roadworks, and few places to park for a short time, anywhere near the church.
My back is achy, so I wanted somewhere close to park. Anyway, I drove round the town twice, found nowhere to park, so turned the car round and headed back north, until I came to South Cove.
South Cove is a small village, a few farms really, but has a fine, if rustic, well-proportioned church, set in a large churchyard.
And the church was open, so small the wide angle lens wasn't needed, and with windows close to the floor too, no big lens needed either.
Next town up is Kessingland, which until the 80s had the A12 running through the centre of it, but now a bypass lays to the west and the village is quiet. I don't think I had been of the main street, so I went in search of the church, and found it on Church Street.
Obviously.
I rarely research churches before I visit, so nothing prepared me for the interior of St Edmund.
It seems in the last two years, they church had sourced some banners with apt slogans on, banners which were made to look like large tapered ensigns, hanging from or along the supports of the roof.
A man was practicing on the organ, and the notes echoed round the church. Not only does the church have banners, it has ship's wheels and other nautical stuff, although most traditionalists won't like it, I think it hangs together, and if the congregation wants it thus, who are we to argue?
Next stop was South Cove, which I had forgotten I had visited before, so redid all my shots. But this time did see the panel featuring St Michael behind the font, where the rood steps began.
A small, perfect, church, perfect for a small country parish.
I take my shots and leave, driving back onto the A12 and heading into Lowestoft, my main task was to drive over the new bridge which spans Lake Lothing.
The town had been waiting since at least 1966 for a new bridge, and the 3rd crossing was opened in September, and offers fine views as you drive across.
I went to see the old family home. It has been renovated and looks splendid, and not much like it was when sold four years back, it looks cared for and lived in, which is what the buyer promised us he would do.
So then to the crematorium, a drive north through Gunton and past Hopton where Dougie lives, then through the housing estate behind the area hospital to the car park, and then wait.
Margaret was 89, had a long life, but friends of the same age are few, and families are now scattered. So, one can never be sure how many will attend. The chapel was half full at least, with people coming from Kent, Wiltshire and even California to be there.
The celebrant spoke for twenty minutes, saying nice things as they have to do. But, avoiding, or just hinting at faults. Whatever she had done in her life to Dougie, he still loved her, and he was in bits.
Afterward we lined up to shake his hand or give him and Pennie a hug, and allowed me to tell him he was the brother I never had. He was always there for me, and will be there for him.
More tears.
There was a wake at the pub in Hopton, but there was no one I knew other than Dougie and Penny, so I had a drink and made my excuses. These things are really for family and close friends, so I left at quarter to three, hoping to get home before midnight.
In the end, I made good time, I was going round Ipswich before four, and at the M25 junction less than an hour later, and was able to easily join it and zoom round to the bridge. No queues on the southbound side, but the queue northbound went all the way back to the M20 junction, so six mines.
I zoomed on.
I got home at ten past six, happy to have done it and go home in under three and a half hours. Dinner was defrosted ragu, pasta and reheated focaccia, which we were sitting down to eat twenty minutes after getting in.
Phew.
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Perhaps some counties have a church which sums them up. If there has to be one for Suffolk, it must be the church of the Most Holy Trinity, Blythburgh. Here is the late medieval Suffolk imagination writ large, as large as it gets, and not overwritten by the Anglican triumphalism of the 19th century. Blythburgh church is often compared with its near neighbour, St Edmund at Southwold, but this isn't a fair comparison - Southwold church is much grander, and full of urban confidence. Probably a better comparison is with St Margaret, Lowestoft, for there, too, the Reformation intervened before the tower could be rebuilt. The two churches have a lot in common, but Blythburgh has the saving grace. It is so fascinating, so stunningly beautiful, by virtue of a factor that is rare in Anglican parish churches: sheer neglect.
Holy Trinity, Blythburgh, is the church that Suffolk people know and love best, and because of this it has generated some extraordinary legends. The first is that Blythburgh, now a tiny village bisected by the fearsome A12 between London and the east coast ports, was once a thriving medieval town. This idea is used to explain the size of the church; in reality, it is almost certainly not the case. Blythburgh has always been small. But it did have an important medieval priory, and thus its church attracted enough wealthy piety on the eve of the Reformation to bankroll a spectacular rebuilding.
It is to Lavenham, Long Melford, Mildenhall, Southwold and here that we come to see the late 15th century Suffolk aesthetic in perfection. But for my money, Holy Trinity, Blythburgh, is the most significant medieval art object in the county, ranking alongside Salle in Norfolk. Look up at the clerestory; it seems impossible, there is so much glass, so little stone; and yet it rides the building with an air of permanence. Beneath, there is a coyness about the aisles that I prefer to the mathematics of Lavenham. Here, it could not have been done otherwise; it distils human architectural experience. If St Peter and St Paul at Lavenham is man talking to God, Holy Trinity at Blythburgh is God talking to man.
At the east end, a curious series of initials in Lombardic script stretch across the outer chancel wall. You can see an image of this at the top. It reads A-N-JS-B-S-T-M-S-A-H-K-R. This probably stands for Ad Nomina JesuS, Beati Sanctae Trinitas, Maria Sanctorem Anne Honorem Katherine Reconstructus ('In the name of the blessed Jesus, the Holy Trinity, and in honour of Holy Mary, Anne and Katherine, this was rebuilt'). A fanciful theory is that they are the initials of the wives of the donors. However, note the symbol of the Trinity in the T stone, and I think this is a clue to the whole piece.
Figures stand on pedestals atop the south side and east end. The most easterly is unusual, a crowned old man sitting on a throne directly on the gable end. This is a medieval image of God the Father, a rare survival. Moving westwards from here we find the Blessed Virgin in prayerful pose, Christ as the Saviour of the World holding an orb in one hand and blessing with the other, and then a collared bear with a ragged staff, a seated woodwose, another bear, this time with a collar and bell, and last of all a fox with a goose in its mouth, his jaws grasping the neck:
The porch is part of the late 15th century rebuilding, but it was considerably restored in the early 20th century. Interestingly, the angels crowning the battlements look medieval - but they weren't there in 1900, so must have come from somewhere else. Pretty much all the porch's features of interest date from this time. These include the small medieval font pressed into service as a holy water stoup, and image niche above the doors. This has been filled in more recent years by an image if the Holy Trinity; God the Father holds the Son suspended while a dove representing the Holy Spirit alights; you can see medieval versions of this at Framlingham and Little Glemham. Of all medieval imagery, this was the most frowned upon by puritans. An image of God the Father was thought the most suspicious of all idolatries. Indeed, as late as the 1870s, when the Reverend White edited the first popular edition of the Diary of William Dowsing, he actually congratulated Dowsing on destroying images of the Holy Trinity in the course of his 1644 progress through the counties of Suffolk and Cambridgeshire.
William Dowsing visited on the morning on April 9th, 1644. It was a Tuesday, and he had spent most of the week in the area. The previous day he'd been at Southwold and Walberswick to the east, but preceded his visit here with one to Blyford, which lies to the west, so he was probably staying overnight at the family home in Laxfield. He found twenty images in stained glass to take to task (a surprisingly small number, given the size of the place) and two hundred more that were inaccessible that morning (probably in the great east window). Three brass inscriptions incurred his wrath (but again, this is curious; there were many more) and he also ordered down the cross on the porch and the cross on the tower. Most significantly of all, he decided the angels in the roof should go.
Lots of Suffolk churches have angels in their roofs. None are like Blythburgh's. You step inside, and there they are, exactly as you've seen them in books and in photographs. They are awesome, breathtaking. There are twelve of them. Perhaps there were once twenty. How would you get them down if ordered to do so? The roof is so high, and the stencilling of IHS symbols would also have to go.
Perhaps this was already indistinct by the time Dowsing visited. Perhaps Tuesday, 9th of April 1644 was a dull day.
Several of the angels are peppered with lead shot. Here is another of those Suffolk legends; that Dowsing and the churchwardens fired muskets at the angels to try and bring them down. But when the angels were restored in the 1970s, the lead shot removed was found to be 18th century; contemporary with them there is a note in the churchwardens accounts that men were paid for shooting jackdaws living inside the building, so that probably explains where the shot came from. Here are some details of that wonderful roof:
The otherwise splendid church guide also repeats the error that the Holy Trinity symbol in the porch filled a gap that had been 'empty since 1644'. But there was certainly no image in it when Dowsing arrived here, or anywhere else in Suffolk; statues were completely outlawed by injunctions in the early years of the reign of Edward VI, almost a hundred years before the morning of Dowsing's visit.
Another feature used as evidence of puritan destruction is the ring fixed into the most westerly pillar of the north arcade. Cromwell's men stabled their horses here, apparently. Well, it almost certainly is a ring for tying horses to, and the broken bricks at the cleared west end also suggest this; but there is no reason to think that Cromwell and the puritans were responsible. For a full century before Cromwell, and for nearly two hundred years afterwards, a church as big as this would have had a multitude of uses. Holy Trinity was built for the rituals of the Catholic church; once these were no longer allowed, a village like Blythburgh, which can never have had more than 500 people, would have seen it as an asset in other ways. It was only with the 19th century sacramental revival brought about by the Oxford Movement that we started getting all holy again about our parish churches. Perhaps it was used as an overnight stables for passing travellers on the main road; not an un-Christian use for it to be put to, I think.
In August 1577, a great storm brought down the steeple, which fell into the church and damaged the font. This was at the height of Elizabethan superstition, and the devil was blamed; his hoof marks can still be seen on the church door. Supposedly, a black dog ran through the church, killing two parishioners; he was seen the same day at St Mary, Bungay. Black Shuck is the East Anglian devil dog, the feared hound of the marshes; and Holy Trinity is the self-styled Cathedral of the Marshes, so it is appropriate that he appeared here. You can see where the font has been broken. You can also see that this was one of the rare, beautiful seven sacrament fonts, similar in style to the one at Westhall; but, like those at neighbouring Wenhaston and Southwold, it has been completely stripped of imagery. Almost certainly, this was in the 1540s, but there is a story that the font at Wenhaston was chiselled clean as part of the 19th century restoration. More importantly in any case, the storm, or the dog, or the devil, damaged the roof; it would not be properly repaired for more than 400 years. Throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, accounts note that Holy Trinity is not impregnable to the weather. By the 19th century, parishioners attended divine service with umbrellas. By the 1880s, it was a positively dangerous building to be in, and the Bishop of Norwich ordered it closed.
Why had Holy Trinity not been restored? Simply, this is a big church, with a tiny village. There was no rich patron, and in any case the parishioners had a passion for Methodism. Probably, repairs had been mooted, but not a wholesale restoration as we have seen at Lavenham, Long Melford and Southwold. By the 1880s, attention in England had turned to the preservation of medieval detail; in short, restorations were not as ignorant as they had been a quarter of a century earlier. Suggestions that Holy Trinity should be restored in the manner of the other three were blocked by the Society for the Preservation of Ancient Buildings, and this owed a lot to the energy of William Morris, the Society's secretary.
The slow, patient restoration of this building took the best part of a century; indeed, when I first visited in the 1980s I was still aware of a sense of decay.
Nothing could be further from the truth today. You step into a wide, white, open space, one of England's great church interiors. There, high above you, is the glorious roof and the angels of God. The brick floors spread around the scraped font, which still bears its dedicatory inscription and standing places for participants. You turn into the central gangway, and more than twenty empty indents for brasses stretch before you. Dowsing can be blamed for the destruction of hardly any of them. In reality, you see the work of 18th and 19th century thieves and collectors.
The bench-ends are superb. The benches themselves were reconstructed in the late 19th century, supposedly from the main post of Westleton windmill, but the ends are some of the county's finest medieval images. There are partial sets of basically three series: the Seven Deadly Sins, the Seven Works of Mercy, and the Labours of the Seasons. There are also angels bearing symbols of the Holy Trinity and the Crown. There are other figures too, obscure and fragmentary and whose purpose is unclear, as if surviving figments of a broken dream. The quality of what remains makes you grieve for what has been lost.
The rood screen is a disappointment; most of it is modern, and the medieval bits perfunctory and scoured. Having said this, note how tiny the exit from the north aisle rood loft stair is. Also at this end of the church, a scattering of medieval glass, mainly angels. There is more in the south aisle, including a collection of shields of the Holy Trinity:
But step through the central aisle to see something remarkable. The priest and choir stalls are fronted by exquisite carvings of the Apostles, the Evangelists, John the Baptist, St Stephen, Mary Queen of Heaven and Christ in Majesty. Seeing these eighteen carvings is a bit like gobbling up a very large box of chocolates, but it is worth stopping to consider quite how genuine they all are. For a start, there could not have been choir stalls here in medieval times, and in any case we know that these desks and their frontages were in the north aisle chapel until the 19th century. They were used as school benches in the 17th century; they still bear holes for inkpots, and the graffiti of a bored Dutch child (his father was probably working on draining the marshes) is dated 1665. There is nothing at all like them anywhere else in Suffolk.
Whatever, the east end of the chancel and aisles are thrillingly modern, wholly devotional. In the north aisle, traditionally the Hopton chantry, extraordinary friezes of skeletons become symbols of the four evangelists behind the altar. Beside them is Peter Ball's beautiful Madonna and Child. Separating the south aisle chapel from the sanctuary is is one of Suffolk's biggest Easter sepulchres, tomb of the Hoptons. Behind the high altar, branches arranged like huge stag antlers spread dramatically. It is all just about perfect. Tucked to one side of the organ is a clockjack; Suffolk has two, and the other is down-river at Southwold. They date from the late 17th century, and presumably once struck the hours; at high church Blythburgh and Southwold today, they are used to announce the entry of the ministers.
This is a wonderful church to wander around in, the light and the air changing with the seasons, a suffused sense of the numinous presenting its different faces according to the time of day and time of year. Come here on a bright spring morning, or in the drowsy heat of a summer's day. Come on a cold winter afternoon as the colours fade and the smell of woodsmoke from neighbouring cottages weaves a spell above the old stone floors and woodwork. And before you leave, find the doorway in the south-west corner of the nave. It opens onto a low, narrow stairway. You can go up it. It leads up into the parvise storey of the south porch, now reappointed and dedicated as a tiny chapel, a peaceful spot to spend a few moments before continuing your journey.
You may be reading this entry in a far-off land; or perhaps you are here at home. Whatever, if you have not visited this church, then I urge you to do so. It is the most beautiful church in Suffolk, a wonderful art object, and it is always open in daylight. It remains one of the most significant medieval buildings in England. If you only visit one of Suffolk's churches, then make it this one
Simon Knott, 2014.
I am quite happy with this image, I thought I would experiment with some filters to see what effects I would get, and I quite liked the Fresco filter. This is my edited image of the river photo I have taken. To create this image I adjusted the Hue and saturation of the image, I put the Hue at -5 and the saturation at 60. Doing this made the image become a little litter and brought out some of the detail in the image. I then went onto filter, render on the drop down menu and select Lens flare. I placed it in the corner of the Image because I thought it looked good there. The next thing I did was adjust the shadow and highlights the shadows were at 0% and the highlights I put to 15%. This brought out some brightness in the image and I think made it become more eye catching. The final thing that I did was add a filter to the image. I was messing about with the filters can come across fresco and I quite liked the artist effect it gave it. The fresco filter brush size was on 2, brush detail at 8 and had a texture of 1.
A martial arts education of intelligent curriculum curated by Sensei Dan Rominski at his martial art school located in Rutherford NJ. Visit our website www.thedojo.org Self-Defense for children at (201) 933-3050 or email SenseiDan@TheDOJO.org
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The second of two pieces I got on clearance from Bandai Namco during Black Friday 2022 was this Storm Collectibles Zangief, based on his Ultra Street Fighter 2 appearance.
Funny thing is that it is the Event Exclusive colour, which technically should be harder to get and cost more aftermarket, but here we are - I think it was like $50 USD?
My best guess? People really, really love their P1 colours and refuse anything else.
I actually own a SFV Zangief and generally wouldn't have bitten even at this price, but the Zangief I have cam with a really bad waist joint, to the point where it doesn't actually hold together properly.
I also just realized I was too lazy to fish it out of a cabinet to do some comparison photos.
The two are the same height and are actually much different aesthetically than you would think - they're actually two very different figures, though as youc an imagine the base body engineering is the same... which means that Zangief still has a functional neck joint.
Yes, that sound stupid, but keep in mind that I've not opened a male Storm collectibles figure for quite a while now, and they actually stopped putting working neck joints in their female figures as early on as SFV Cammy.
This is also the company that ditched their stands, so really such a cost cutting step shouldn't surprise any one.
Several head sculpts are included with the figure, including an Ultra SF2 line exclusive "You Lose" head sculpt. They look appropriately ugly because well quite frankly SF2 Zangief wasn't as pretty as he is now.
In addition to the heads, the figure has several hands, two dedicated Banishing Fist palms and one actual effect. There is one stand which I think is to support the effect, but I can't find a hole anywhere to mount it.
Zangief's articulation remains good, though the actual range of motion is limited, particularly in the legs, due to the sheer bulk of them. Also, as one would expect some poses don't quite look natural.
Commands: F: fave this image | L: view large on black
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How it was shot:
* Handheld
* Three exposures (0, -2, +2 EV) autobracketed and merged to get and HDR
* Camera: Nikon D7000
* Lens: Nikon AF-S 70mm-200mm
Steps Taken
* Preparation: developed the raw files with Adobe Camera Raw (CA + Lens Corrections)
* Resulting images (3x TIFF) + Topaz Denoise on each TIFF, then imported to Photomatix
* Tone-mapping: Photomatix Pro 4.0.2
Photoshop Post Processing Steps:
* Topaz Adjust
* Topaz DeNoise
* Global brightness/contrast layer
* Global levels layer
* Little bit of Dodge tool
To learn more about HDR Photography please check out the following 2 sites - they have taught me most of what I now know:
Vince Gill in Wichita Apr 3rd 1997. Front row seats. He signs his song list at his shows and leaves it on the stage for someone to get and we got it.
There is a point in our lives when we, the children, become the adults in the relationship with our parents.
It will come for most of us, no one tells you this will happen, and you are unprepared for it. But it comes
And each of us has a different relationship with our parents than everyone else, what's right for me, and my views, do not apply to you.
Yesterday, was the funeral of the person I have known longer than anyone else on this earth, now that my family is all gone. Margaret and Brian were married a few weeks before mine, and moved into the new build bungalow also a few weeks before my parents.
They also had one child, a son, and Douglas and I have been friends longer than I have been friends with anyone else, although he is a year younger than me.
I have my views on Margaret, but the reason I travelled back to Suffolk for her funeral, was to be there for Douggie, and give him the support he has given me through three weddings and two funerals.
Norfolk isn't far away, and the funeral and wake were taking place just a mile or two over the border from Suffolk, but the roads beyond Ipswich are poor, twisty and where there are accidents or roadworks, no real alternative routes.
I was also leaving just before six, so had to get across the Thames at Dartford and up the A12 during rush hour, so it wouldn't be easy. But at least there would be no rain.
I was up at five, dressed and washed, with time to drink a coffee before leaving. Loading the car with me and my camera bag, as I had plans in case I had time, to visit a church or two.
It was dark up the M20 to Dartford, and busy with traffic, but I made good time, and listened to a loop of old music podcasts all day, so chat and music kept me awake.
I got onto the M25 with no problem, and through the tunnels with only a slight slowdown, but on the other side there were queues.
Despite not wanting to spend money on a new railway, there is always money for road and junction improvements, even if it will just increase traffic. So it is that the M25/A12 junction is being upgraded, and with narrow lanes, speed restrictions, jams began a good four miles before the roadworks started.
I forced my way to the left hand lane, which became a filter lane, meaning it was much quicker than the remaining four lanes. But then came the roundabout. The roundabout under the motorway is the reason the improvements are needed, and queueing traffic blocks the junctions and causes even more backlogs.
Of course, traffic lights on roundabouts are never good ideas, so I was confronted with a wall of traffic, so when the light went green, I went in front of a track before it could shuffle forward and block more of the junction, then there was some clear road.
And ducking into the extreme left hand lane, I dodged past the queuing traffic that was blocking the exit from the A12, and onto clear road.
Yay.
The sky was clear, the sun about to rise, and it was going to be a glorious day.
Just north of Chelmsford, I stopped for breakfast: two sausage rolls and a coffee from Greggs, then filled up the tank and on my way north.
More traffic at Ipswich where the A12 meets the A14 to get over the Orwell, but then clear traffic again after ten minutes delay.
Soon, though, the road narrows to two lane blacktop, and all is well until you meet a slower vehicle. Like a tractor as we did soon after Whickham Market.
For 15 long minutes the tractor lead a growing snake of cars along the winding lanes until it pulled over and we could get past.
Blythburgh was always the marker when travelling back from Ipswich or beyond, that we were nearly home. he handsome church sits high, for Suffolk, overlooking the village and river which is mostly mudflats.
The busy A12 skirts close, but you get to the church via a narrow land, leaving the modern world far behind.
The church opened at nine, it was nearly half past, it was probably open before nine, and was open when I pushed the porch door.
Inside is an unspoilt space, grey wood that have witnessed the centuries so that their vigour has faded to almost no colour of all.
Its the roof people come for. Wooden beams and pairs of wooden angels. I have brought my big lens so to snap them.
My plan was to visit the large and impressive church in Southwold. I turned off the A12 and drove along the straight road into the town, where I found multiple sets of roadworks, and few places to park for a short time, anywhere near the church.
My back is achy, so I wanted somewhere close to park. Anyway, I drove round the town twice, found nowhere to park, so turned the car round and headed back north, until I came to South Cove.
South Cove is a small village, a few farms really, but has a fine, if rustic, well-proportioned church, set in a large churchyard.
And the church was open, so small the wide angle lens wasn't needed, and with windows close to the floor too, no big lens needed either.
Next town up is Kessingland, which until the 80s had the A12 running through the centre of it, but now a bypass lays to the west and the village is quiet. I don't think I had been of the main street, so I went in search of the church, and found it on Church Street.
Obviously.
I rarely research churches before I visit, so nothing prepared me for the interior of St Edmund.
It seems in the last two years, they church had sourced some banners with apt slogans on, banners which were made to look like large tapered ensigns, hanging from or along the supports of the roof.
A man was practicing on the organ, and the notes echoed round the church. Not only does the church have banners, it has ship's wheels and other nautical stuff, although most traditionalists won't like it, I think it hangs together, and if the congregation wants it thus, who are we to argue?
Next stop was South Cove, which I had forgotten I had visited before, so redid all my shots. But this time did see the panel featuring St Michael behind the font, where the rood steps began.
A small, perfect, church, perfect for a small country parish.
I take my shots and leave, driving back onto the A12 and heading into Lowestoft, my main task was to drive over the new bridge which spans Lake Lothing.
The town had been waiting since at least 1966 for a new bridge, and the 3rd crossing was opened in September, and offers fine views as you drive across.
I went to see the old family home. It has been renovated and looks splendid, and not much like it was when sold four years back, it looks cared for and lived in, which is what the buyer promised us he would do.
So then to the crematorium, a drive north through Gunton and past Hopton where Dougie lives, then through the housing estate behind the area hospital to the car park, and then wait.
Margaret was 89, had a long life, but friends of the same age are few, and families are now scattered. So, one can never be sure how many will attend. The chapel was half full at least, with people coming from Kent, Wiltshire and even California to be there.
The celebrant spoke for twenty minutes, saying nice things as they have to do. But, avoiding, or just hinting at faults. Whatever she had done in her life to Dougie, he still loved her, and he was in bits.
Afterward we lined up to shake his hand or give him and Pennie a hug, and allowed me to tell him he was the brother I never had. He was always there for me, and will be there for him.
More tears.
There was a wake at the pub in Hopton, but there was no one I knew other than Dougie and Penny, so I had a drink and made my excuses. These things are really for family and close friends, so I left at quarter to three, hoping to get home before midnight.
In the end, I made good time, I was going round Ipswich before four, and at the M25 junction less than an hour later, and was able to easily join it and zoom round to the bridge. No queues on the southbound side, but the queue northbound went all the way back to the M20 junction, so six mines.
I zoomed on.
I got home at ten past six, happy to have done it and go home in under three and a half hours. Dinner was defrosted ragu, pasta and reheated focaccia, which we were sitting down to eat twenty minutes after getting in.
Phew.
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Perhaps some counties have a church which sums them up. If there has to be one for Suffolk, it must be the church of the Most Holy Trinity, Blythburgh. Here is the late medieval Suffolk imagination writ large, as large as it gets, and not overwritten by the Anglican triumphalism of the 19th century. Blythburgh church is often compared with its near neighbour, St Edmund at Southwold, but this isn't a fair comparison - Southwold church is much grander, and full of urban confidence. Probably a better comparison is with St Margaret, Lowestoft, for there, too, the Reformation intervened before the tower could be rebuilt. The two churches have a lot in common, but Blythburgh has the saving grace. It is so fascinating, so stunningly beautiful, by virtue of a factor that is rare in Anglican parish churches: sheer neglect.
Holy Trinity, Blythburgh, is the church that Suffolk people know and love best, and because of this it has generated some extraordinary legends. The first is that Blythburgh, now a tiny village bisected by the fearsome A12 between London and the east coast ports, was once a thriving medieval town. This idea is used to explain the size of the church; in reality, it is almost certainly not the case. Blythburgh has always been small. But it did have an important medieval priory, and thus its church attracted enough wealthy piety on the eve of the Reformation to bankroll a spectacular rebuilding.
It is to Lavenham, Long Melford, Mildenhall, Southwold and here that we come to see the late 15th century Suffolk aesthetic in perfection. But for my money, Holy Trinity, Blythburgh, is the most significant medieval art object in the county, ranking alongside Salle in Norfolk. Look up at the clerestory; it seems impossible, there is so much glass, so little stone; and yet it rides the building with an air of permanence. Beneath, there is a coyness about the aisles that I prefer to the mathematics of Lavenham. Here, it could not have been done otherwise; it distils human architectural experience. If St Peter and St Paul at Lavenham is man talking to God, Holy Trinity at Blythburgh is God talking to man.
At the east end, a curious series of initials in Lombardic script stretch across the outer chancel wall. You can see an image of this at the top. It reads A-N-JS-B-S-T-M-S-A-H-K-R. This probably stands for Ad Nomina JesuS, Beati Sanctae Trinitas, Maria Sanctorem Anne Honorem Katherine Reconstructus ('In the name of the blessed Jesus, the Holy Trinity, and in honour of Holy Mary, Anne and Katherine, this was rebuilt'). A fanciful theory is that they are the initials of the wives of the donors. However, note the symbol of the Trinity in the T stone, and I think this is a clue to the whole piece.
Figures stand on pedestals atop the south side and east end. The most easterly is unusual, a crowned old man sitting on a throne directly on the gable end. This is a medieval image of God the Father, a rare survival. Moving westwards from here we find the Blessed Virgin in prayerful pose, Christ as the Saviour of the World holding an orb in one hand and blessing with the other, and then a collared bear with a ragged staff, a seated woodwose, another bear, this time with a collar and bell, and last of all a fox with a goose in its mouth, his jaws grasping the neck:
The porch is part of the late 15th century rebuilding, but it was considerably restored in the early 20th century. Interestingly, the angels crowning the battlements look medieval - but they weren't there in 1900, so must have come from somewhere else. Pretty much all the porch's features of interest date from this time. These include the small medieval font pressed into service as a holy water stoup, and image niche above the doors. This has been filled in more recent years by an image if the Holy Trinity; God the Father holds the Son suspended while a dove representing the Holy Spirit alights; you can see medieval versions of this at Framlingham and Little Glemham. Of all medieval imagery, this was the most frowned upon by puritans. An image of God the Father was thought the most suspicious of all idolatries. Indeed, as late as the 1870s, when the Reverend White edited the first popular edition of the Diary of William Dowsing, he actually congratulated Dowsing on destroying images of the Holy Trinity in the course of his 1644 progress through the counties of Suffolk and Cambridgeshire.
William Dowsing visited on the morning on April 9th, 1644. It was a Tuesday, and he had spent most of the week in the area. The previous day he'd been at Southwold and Walberswick to the east, but preceded his visit here with one to Blyford, which lies to the west, so he was probably staying overnight at the family home in Laxfield. He found twenty images in stained glass to take to task (a surprisingly small number, given the size of the place) and two hundred more that were inaccessible that morning (probably in the great east window). Three brass inscriptions incurred his wrath (but again, this is curious; there were many more) and he also ordered down the cross on the porch and the cross on the tower. Most significantly of all, he decided the angels in the roof should go.
Lots of Suffolk churches have angels in their roofs. None are like Blythburgh's. You step inside, and there they are, exactly as you've seen them in books and in photographs. They are awesome, breathtaking. There are twelve of them. Perhaps there were once twenty. How would you get them down if ordered to do so? The roof is so high, and the stencilling of IHS symbols would also have to go.
Perhaps this was already indistinct by the time Dowsing visited. Perhaps Tuesday, 9th of April 1644 was a dull day.
Several of the angels are peppered with lead shot. Here is another of those Suffolk legends; that Dowsing and the churchwardens fired muskets at the angels to try and bring them down. But when the angels were restored in the 1970s, the lead shot removed was found to be 18th century; contemporary with them there is a note in the churchwardens accounts that men were paid for shooting jackdaws living inside the building, so that probably explains where the shot came from. Here are some details of that wonderful roof:
The otherwise splendid church guide also repeats the error that the Holy Trinity symbol in the porch filled a gap that had been 'empty since 1644'. But there was certainly no image in it when Dowsing arrived here, or anywhere else in Suffolk; statues were completely outlawed by injunctions in the early years of the reign of Edward VI, almost a hundred years before the morning of Dowsing's visit.
Another feature used as evidence of puritan destruction is the ring fixed into the most westerly pillar of the north arcade. Cromwell's men stabled their horses here, apparently. Well, it almost certainly is a ring for tying horses to, and the broken bricks at the cleared west end also suggest this; but there is no reason to think that Cromwell and the puritans were responsible. For a full century before Cromwell, and for nearly two hundred years afterwards, a church as big as this would have had a multitude of uses. Holy Trinity was built for the rituals of the Catholic church; once these were no longer allowed, a village like Blythburgh, which can never have had more than 500 people, would have seen it as an asset in other ways. It was only with the 19th century sacramental revival brought about by the Oxford Movement that we started getting all holy again about our parish churches. Perhaps it was used as an overnight stables for passing travellers on the main road; not an un-Christian use for it to be put to, I think.
In August 1577, a great storm brought down the steeple, which fell into the church and damaged the font. This was at the height of Elizabethan superstition, and the devil was blamed; his hoof marks can still be seen on the church door. Supposedly, a black dog ran through the church, killing two parishioners; he was seen the same day at St Mary, Bungay. Black Shuck is the East Anglian devil dog, the feared hound of the marshes; and Holy Trinity is the self-styled Cathedral of the Marshes, so it is appropriate that he appeared here. You can see where the font has been broken. You can also see that this was one of the rare, beautiful seven sacrament fonts, similar in style to the one at Westhall; but, like those at neighbouring Wenhaston and Southwold, it has been completely stripped of imagery. Almost certainly, this was in the 1540s, but there is a story that the font at Wenhaston was chiselled clean as part of the 19th century restoration. More importantly in any case, the storm, or the dog, or the devil, damaged the roof; it would not be properly repaired for more than 400 years. Throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, accounts note that Holy Trinity is not impregnable to the weather. By the 19th century, parishioners attended divine service with umbrellas. By the 1880s, it was a positively dangerous building to be in, and the Bishop of Norwich ordered it closed.
Why had Holy Trinity not been restored? Simply, this is a big church, with a tiny village. There was no rich patron, and in any case the parishioners had a passion for Methodism. Probably, repairs had been mooted, but not a wholesale restoration as we have seen at Lavenham, Long Melford and Southwold. By the 1880s, attention in England had turned to the preservation of medieval detail; in short, restorations were not as ignorant as they had been a quarter of a century earlier. Suggestions that Holy Trinity should be restored in the manner of the other three were blocked by the Society for the Preservation of Ancient Buildings, and this owed a lot to the energy of William Morris, the Society's secretary.
The slow, patient restoration of this building took the best part of a century; indeed, when I first visited in the 1980s I was still aware of a sense of decay.
Nothing could be further from the truth today. You step into a wide, white, open space, one of England's great church interiors. There, high above you, is the glorious roof and the angels of God. The brick floors spread around the scraped font, which still bears its dedicatory inscription and standing places for participants. You turn into the central gangway, and more than twenty empty indents for brasses stretch before you. Dowsing can be blamed for the destruction of hardly any of them. In reality, you see the work of 18th and 19th century thieves and collectors.
The bench-ends are superb. The benches themselves were reconstructed in the late 19th century, supposedly from the main post of Westleton windmill, but the ends are some of the county's finest medieval images. There are partial sets of basically three series: the Seven Deadly Sins, the Seven Works of Mercy, and the Labours of the Seasons. There are also angels bearing symbols of the Holy Trinity and the Crown. There are other figures too, obscure and fragmentary and whose purpose is unclear, as if surviving figments of a broken dream. The quality of what remains makes you grieve for what has been lost.
The rood screen is a disappointment; most of it is modern, and the medieval bits perfunctory and scoured. Having said this, note how tiny the exit from the north aisle rood loft stair is. Also at this end of the church, a scattering of medieval glass, mainly angels. There is more in the south aisle, including a collection of shields of the Holy Trinity:
But step through the central aisle to see something remarkable. The priest and choir stalls are fronted by exquisite carvings of the Apostles, the Evangelists, John the Baptist, St Stephen, Mary Queen of Heaven and Christ in Majesty. Seeing these eighteen carvings is a bit like gobbling up a very large box of chocolates, but it is worth stopping to consider quite how genuine they all are. For a start, there could not have been choir stalls here in medieval times, and in any case we know that these desks and their frontages were in the north aisle chapel until the 19th century. They were used as school benches in the 17th century; they still bear holes for inkpots, and the graffiti of a bored Dutch child (his father was probably working on draining the marshes) is dated 1665. There is nothing at all like them anywhere else in Suffolk.
Whatever, the east end of the chancel and aisles are thrillingly modern, wholly devotional. In the north aisle, traditionally the Hopton chantry, extraordinary friezes of skeletons become symbols of the four evangelists behind the altar. Beside them is Peter Ball's beautiful Madonna and Child. Separating the south aisle chapel from the sanctuary is is one of Suffolk's biggest Easter sepulchres, tomb of the Hoptons. Behind the high altar, branches arranged like huge stag antlers spread dramatically. It is all just about perfect. Tucked to one side of the organ is a clockjack; Suffolk has two, and the other is down-river at Southwold. They date from the late 17th century, and presumably once struck the hours; at high church Blythburgh and Southwold today, they are used to announce the entry of the ministers.
This is a wonderful church to wander around in, the light and the air changing with the seasons, a suffused sense of the numinous presenting its different faces according to the time of day and time of year. Come here on a bright spring morning, or in the drowsy heat of a summer's day. Come on a cold winter afternoon as the colours fade and the smell of woodsmoke from neighbouring cottages weaves a spell above the old stone floors and woodwork. And before you leave, find the doorway in the south-west corner of the nave. It opens onto a low, narrow stairway. You can go up it. It leads up into the parvise storey of the south porch, now reappointed and dedicated as a tiny chapel, a peaceful spot to spend a few moments before continuing your journey.
You may be reading this entry in a far-off land; or perhaps you are here at home. Whatever, if you have not visited this church, then I urge you to do so. It is the most beautiful church in Suffolk, a wonderful art object, and it is always open in daylight. It remains one of the most significant medieval buildings in England. If you only visit one of Suffolk's churches, then make it this one
Simon Knott, 2014.
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This used to be the grandest part of town,
Now it's all scruffed up and subsiding into ground,
There's been markets, garbage riots,
Maydays and meteors in the streets,
Today it's just a place where we meet,
And i tell you about sleeping lions, slates and pool halls,
And you tell me about cheap tequila, placenames and fruit machines,
And i know you're always lying,
But is gets me everytime,
Down there's the place we dress up as mermaids for the day,
All tinsel, nylon and brocade,
And your sunglasses stuck with sequins from the shop dwon at the end,
Where they sell unlabelled tin cans,
You just guess what you're going to get,
And i tell you that this faded glamour's a stupid art-school idea,
And you tell me i don't know because i don't have to live here,
I could move away, probably will someday,
But you know what your faded glamour does to me,
It gets me everytime,
We could just walk around,
We could just walk all over town,
When there's nothing left to say.
...Faded Glamour - Animals That Swim
There is a point in our lives when we, the children, become the adults in the relationship with our parents.
It will come for most of us, no one tells you this will happen, and you are unprepared for it. But it comes
And each of us has a different relationship with our parents than everyone else, what's right for me, and my views, do not apply to you.
Yesterday, was the funeral of the person I have known longer than anyone else on this earth, now that my family is all gone. Margaret and Brian were married a few weeks before mine, and moved into the new build bungalow also a few weeks before my parents.
They also had one child, a son, and Douglas and I have been friends longer than I have been friends with anyone else, although he is a year younger than me.
I have my views on Margaret, but the reason I travelled back to Suffolk for her funeral, was to be there for Douggie, and give him the support he has given me through three weddings and two funerals.
Norfolk isn't far away, and the funeral and wake were taking place just a mile or two over the border from Suffolk, but the roads beyond Ipswich are poor, twisty and where there are accidents or roadworks, no real alternative routes.
I was also leaving just before six, so had to get across the Thames at Dartford and up the A12 during rush hour, so it wouldn't be easy. But at least there would be no rain.
I was up at five, dressed and washed, with time to drink a coffee before leaving. Loading the car with me and my camera bag, as I had plans in case I had time, to visit a church or two.
It was dark up the M20 to Dartford, and busy with traffic, but I made good time, and listened to a loop of old music podcasts all day, so chat and music kept me awake.
I got onto the M25 with no problem, and through the tunnels with only a slight slowdown, but on the other side there were queues.
Despite not wanting to spend money on a new railway, there is always money for road and junction improvements, even if it will just increase traffic. So it is that the M25/A12 junction is being upgraded, and with narrow lanes, speed restrictions, jams began a good four miles before the roadworks started.
I forced my way to the left hand lane, which became a filter lane, meaning it was much quicker than the remaining four lanes. But then came the roundabout. The roundabout under the motorway is the reason the improvements are needed, and queueing traffic blocks the junctions and causes even more backlogs.
Of course, traffic lights on roundabouts are never good ideas, so I was confronted with a wall of traffic, so when the light went green, I went in front of a track before it could shuffle forward and block more of the junction, then there was some clear road.
And ducking into the extreme left hand lane, I dodged past the queuing traffic that was blocking the exit from the A12, and onto clear road.
Yay.
The sky was clear, the sun about to rise, and it was going to be a glorious day.
Just north of Chelmsford, I stopped for breakfast: two sausage rolls and a coffee from Greggs, then filled up the tank and on my way north.
More traffic at Ipswich where the A12 meets the A14 to get over the Orwell, but then clear traffic again after ten minutes delay.
Soon, though, the road narrows to two lane blacktop, and all is well until you meet a slower vehicle. Like a tractor as we did soon after Whickham Market.
For 15 long minutes the tractor lead a growing snake of cars along the winding lanes until it pulled over and we could get past.
Blythburgh was always the marker when travelling back from Ipswich or beyond, that we were nearly home. he handsome church sits high, for Suffolk, overlooking the village and river which is mostly mudflats.
The busy A12 skirts close, but you get to the church via a narrow land, leaving the modern world far behind.
The church opened at nine, it was nearly half past, it was probably open before nine, and was open when I pushed the porch door.
Inside is an unspoilt space, grey wood that have witnessed the centuries so that their vigour has faded to almost no colour of all.
Its the roof people come for. Wooden beams and pairs of wooden angels. I have brought my big lens so to snap them.
My plan was to visit the large and impressive church in Southwold. I turned off the A12 and drove along the straight road into the town, where I found multiple sets of roadworks, and few places to park for a short time, anywhere near the church.
My back is achy, so I wanted somewhere close to park. Anyway, I drove round the town twice, found nowhere to park, so turned the car round and headed back north, until I came to South Cove.
South Cove is a small village, a few farms really, but has a fine, if rustic, well-proportioned church, set in a large churchyard.
And the church was open, so small the wide angle lens wasn't needed, and with windows close to the floor too, no big lens needed either.
Next town up is Kessingland, which until the 80s had the A12 running through the centre of it, but now a bypass lays to the west and the village is quiet. I don't think I had been of the main street, so I went in search of the church, and found it on Church Street.
Obviously.
I rarely research churches before I visit, so nothing prepared me for the interior of St Edmund.
It seems in the last two years, they church had sourced some banners with apt slogans on, banners which were made to look like large tapered ensigns, hanging from or along the supports of the roof.
A man was practicing on the organ, and the notes echoed round the church. Not only does the church have banners, it has ship's wheels and other nautical stuff, although most traditionalists won't like it, I think it hangs together, and if the congregation wants it thus, who are we to argue?
Next stop was South Cove, which I had forgotten I had visited before, so redid all my shots. But this time did see the panel featuring St Michael behind the font, where the rood steps began.
A small, perfect, church, perfect for a small country parish.
I take my shots and leave, driving back onto the A12 and heading into Lowestoft, my main task was to drive over the new bridge which spans Lake Lothing.
The town had been waiting since at least 1966 for a new bridge, and the 3rd crossing was opened in September, and offers fine views as you drive across.
I went to see the old family home. It has been renovated and looks splendid, and not much like it was when sold four years back, it looks cared for and lived in, which is what the buyer promised us he would do.
So then to the crematorium, a drive north through Gunton and past Hopton where Dougie lives, then through the housing estate behind the area hospital to the car park, and then wait.
Margaret was 89, had a long life, but friends of the same age are few, and families are now scattered. So, one can never be sure how many will attend. The chapel was half full at least, with people coming from Kent, Wiltshire and even California to be there.
The celebrant spoke for twenty minutes, saying nice things as they have to do. But, avoiding, or just hinting at faults. Whatever she had done in her life to Dougie, he still loved her, and he was in bits.
Afterward we lined up to shake his hand or give him and Pennie a hug, and allowed me to tell him he was the brother I never had. He was always there for me, and will be there for him.
More tears.
There was a wake at the pub in Hopton, but there was no one I knew other than Dougie and Penny, so I had a drink and made my excuses. These things are really for family and close friends, so I left at quarter to three, hoping to get home before midnight.
In the end, I made good time, I was going round Ipswich before four, and at the M25 junction less than an hour later, and was able to easily join it and zoom round to the bridge. No queues on the southbound side, but the queue northbound went all the way back to the M20 junction, so six mines.
I zoomed on.
I got home at ten past six, happy to have done it and go home in under three and a half hours. Dinner was defrosted ragu, pasta and reheated focaccia, which we were sitting down to eat twenty minutes after getting in.
Phew.
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Perhaps some counties have a church which sums them up. If there has to be one for Suffolk, it must be the church of the Most Holy Trinity, Blythburgh. Here is the late medieval Suffolk imagination writ large, as large as it gets, and not overwritten by the Anglican triumphalism of the 19th century. Blythburgh church is often compared with its near neighbour, St Edmund at Southwold, but this isn't a fair comparison - Southwold church is much grander, and full of urban confidence. Probably a better comparison is with St Margaret, Lowestoft, for there, too, the Reformation intervened before the tower could be rebuilt. The two churches have a lot in common, but Blythburgh has the saving grace. It is so fascinating, so stunningly beautiful, by virtue of a factor that is rare in Anglican parish churches: sheer neglect.
Holy Trinity, Blythburgh, is the church that Suffolk people know and love best, and because of this it has generated some extraordinary legends. The first is that Blythburgh, now a tiny village bisected by the fearsome A12 between London and the east coast ports, was once a thriving medieval town. This idea is used to explain the size of the church; in reality, it is almost certainly not the case. Blythburgh has always been small. But it did have an important medieval priory, and thus its church attracted enough wealthy piety on the eve of the Reformation to bankroll a spectacular rebuilding.
It is to Lavenham, Long Melford, Mildenhall, Southwold and here that we come to see the late 15th century Suffolk aesthetic in perfection. But for my money, Holy Trinity, Blythburgh, is the most significant medieval art object in the county, ranking alongside Salle in Norfolk. Look up at the clerestory; it seems impossible, there is so much glass, so little stone; and yet it rides the building with an air of permanence. Beneath, there is a coyness about the aisles that I prefer to the mathematics of Lavenham. Here, it could not have been done otherwise; it distils human architectural experience. If St Peter and St Paul at Lavenham is man talking to God, Holy Trinity at Blythburgh is God talking to man.
At the east end, a curious series of initials in Lombardic script stretch across the outer chancel wall. You can see an image of this at the top. It reads A-N-JS-B-S-T-M-S-A-H-K-R. This probably stands for Ad Nomina JesuS, Beati Sanctae Trinitas, Maria Sanctorem Anne Honorem Katherine Reconstructus ('In the name of the blessed Jesus, the Holy Trinity, and in honour of Holy Mary, Anne and Katherine, this was rebuilt'). A fanciful theory is that they are the initials of the wives of the donors. However, note the symbol of the Trinity in the T stone, and I think this is a clue to the whole piece.
Figures stand on pedestals atop the south side and east end. The most easterly is unusual, a crowned old man sitting on a throne directly on the gable end. This is a medieval image of God the Father, a rare survival. Moving westwards from here we find the Blessed Virgin in prayerful pose, Christ as the Saviour of the World holding an orb in one hand and blessing with the other, and then a collared bear with a ragged staff, a seated woodwose, another bear, this time with a collar and bell, and last of all a fox with a goose in its mouth, his jaws grasping the neck:
The porch is part of the late 15th century rebuilding, but it was considerably restored in the early 20th century. Interestingly, the angels crowning the battlements look medieval - but they weren't there in 1900, so must have come from somewhere else. Pretty much all the porch's features of interest date from this time. These include the small medieval font pressed into service as a holy water stoup, and image niche above the doors. This has been filled in more recent years by an image if the Holy Trinity; God the Father holds the Son suspended while a dove representing the Holy Spirit alights; you can see medieval versions of this at Framlingham and Little Glemham. Of all medieval imagery, this was the most frowned upon by puritans. An image of God the Father was thought the most suspicious of all idolatries. Indeed, as late as the 1870s, when the Reverend White edited the first popular edition of the Diary of William Dowsing, he actually congratulated Dowsing on destroying images of the Holy Trinity in the course of his 1644 progress through the counties of Suffolk and Cambridgeshire.
William Dowsing visited on the morning on April 9th, 1644. It was a Tuesday, and he had spent most of the week in the area. The previous day he'd been at Southwold and Walberswick to the east, but preceded his visit here with one to Blyford, which lies to the west, so he was probably staying overnight at the family home in Laxfield. He found twenty images in stained glass to take to task (a surprisingly small number, given the size of the place) and two hundred more that were inaccessible that morning (probably in the great east window). Three brass inscriptions incurred his wrath (but again, this is curious; there were many more) and he also ordered down the cross on the porch and the cross on the tower. Most significantly of all, he decided the angels in the roof should go.
Lots of Suffolk churches have angels in their roofs. None are like Blythburgh's. You step inside, and there they are, exactly as you've seen them in books and in photographs. They are awesome, breathtaking. There are twelve of them. Perhaps there were once twenty. How would you get them down if ordered to do so? The roof is so high, and the stencilling of IHS symbols would also have to go.
Perhaps this was already indistinct by the time Dowsing visited. Perhaps Tuesday, 9th of April 1644 was a dull day.
Several of the angels are peppered with lead shot. Here is another of those Suffolk legends; that Dowsing and the churchwardens fired muskets at the angels to try and bring them down. But when the angels were restored in the 1970s, the lead shot removed was found to be 18th century; contemporary with them there is a note in the churchwardens accounts that men were paid for shooting jackdaws living inside the building, so that probably explains where the shot came from. Here are some details of that wonderful roof:
The otherwise splendid church guide also repeats the error that the Holy Trinity symbol in the porch filled a gap that had been 'empty since 1644'. But there was certainly no image in it when Dowsing arrived here, or anywhere else in Suffolk; statues were completely outlawed by injunctions in the early years of the reign of Edward VI, almost a hundred years before the morning of Dowsing's visit.
Another feature used as evidence of puritan destruction is the ring fixed into the most westerly pillar of the north arcade. Cromwell's men stabled their horses here, apparently. Well, it almost certainly is a ring for tying horses to, and the broken bricks at the cleared west end also suggest this; but there is no reason to think that Cromwell and the puritans were responsible. For a full century before Cromwell, and for nearly two hundred years afterwards, a church as big as this would have had a multitude of uses. Holy Trinity was built for the rituals of the Catholic church; once these were no longer allowed, a village like Blythburgh, which can never have had more than 500 people, would have seen it as an asset in other ways. It was only with the 19th century sacramental revival brought about by the Oxford Movement that we started getting all holy again about our parish churches. Perhaps it was used as an overnight stables for passing travellers on the main road; not an un-Christian use for it to be put to, I think.
In August 1577, a great storm brought down the steeple, which fell into the church and damaged the font. This was at the height of Elizabethan superstition, and the devil was blamed; his hoof marks can still be seen on the church door. Supposedly, a black dog ran through the church, killing two parishioners; he was seen the same day at St Mary, Bungay. Black Shuck is the East Anglian devil dog, the feared hound of the marshes; and Holy Trinity is the self-styled Cathedral of the Marshes, so it is appropriate that he appeared here. You can see where the font has been broken. You can also see that this was one of the rare, beautiful seven sacrament fonts, similar in style to the one at Westhall; but, like those at neighbouring Wenhaston and Southwold, it has been completely stripped of imagery. Almost certainly, this was in the 1540s, but there is a story that the font at Wenhaston was chiselled clean as part of the 19th century restoration. More importantly in any case, the storm, or the dog, or the devil, damaged the roof; it would not be properly repaired for more than 400 years. Throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, accounts note that Holy Trinity is not impregnable to the weather. By the 19th century, parishioners attended divine service with umbrellas. By the 1880s, it was a positively dangerous building to be in, and the Bishop of Norwich ordered it closed.
Why had Holy Trinity not been restored? Simply, this is a big church, with a tiny village. There was no rich patron, and in any case the parishioners had a passion for Methodism. Probably, repairs had been mooted, but not a wholesale restoration as we have seen at Lavenham, Long Melford and Southwold. By the 1880s, attention in England had turned to the preservation of medieval detail; in short, restorations were not as ignorant as they had been a quarter of a century earlier. Suggestions that Holy Trinity should be restored in the manner of the other three were blocked by the Society for the Preservation of Ancient Buildings, and this owed a lot to the energy of William Morris, the Society's secretary.
The slow, patient restoration of this building took the best part of a century; indeed, when I first visited in the 1980s I was still aware of a sense of decay.
Nothing could be further from the truth today. You step into a wide, white, open space, one of England's great church interiors. There, high above you, is the glorious roof and the angels of God. The brick floors spread around the scraped font, which still bears its dedicatory inscription and standing places for participants. You turn into the central gangway, and more than twenty empty indents for brasses stretch before you. Dowsing can be blamed for the destruction of hardly any of them. In reality, you see the work of 18th and 19th century thieves and collectors.
The bench-ends are superb. The benches themselves were reconstructed in the late 19th century, supposedly from the main post of Westleton windmill, but the ends are some of the county's finest medieval images. There are partial sets of basically three series: the Seven Deadly Sins, the Seven Works of Mercy, and the Labours of the Seasons. There are also angels bearing symbols of the Holy Trinity and the Crown. There are other figures too, obscure and fragmentary and whose purpose is unclear, as if surviving figments of a broken dream. The quality of what remains makes you grieve for what has been lost.
The rood screen is a disappointment; most of it is modern, and the medieval bits perfunctory and scoured. Having said this, note how tiny the exit from the north aisle rood loft stair is. Also at this end of the church, a scattering of medieval glass, mainly angels. There is more in the south aisle, including a collection of shields of the Holy Trinity:
But step through the central aisle to see something remarkable. The priest and choir stalls are fronted by exquisite carvings of the Apostles, the Evangelists, John the Baptist, St Stephen, Mary Queen of Heaven and Christ in Majesty. Seeing these eighteen carvings is a bit like gobbling up a very large box of chocolates, but it is worth stopping to consider quite how genuine they all are. For a start, there could not have been choir stalls here in medieval times, and in any case we know that these desks and their frontages were in the north aisle chapel until the 19th century. They were used as school benches in the 17th century; they still bear holes for inkpots, and the graffiti of a bored Dutch child (his father was probably working on draining the marshes) is dated 1665. There is nothing at all like them anywhere else in Suffolk.
Whatever, the east end of the chancel and aisles are thrillingly modern, wholly devotional. In the north aisle, traditionally the Hopton chantry, extraordinary friezes of skeletons become symbols of the four evangelists behind the altar. Beside them is Peter Ball's beautiful Madonna and Child. Separating the south aisle chapel from the sanctuary is is one of Suffolk's biggest Easter sepulchres, tomb of the Hoptons. Behind the high altar, branches arranged like huge stag antlers spread dramatically. It is all just about perfect. Tucked to one side of the organ is a clockjack; Suffolk has two, and the other is down-river at Southwold. They date from the late 17th century, and presumably once struck the hours; at high church Blythburgh and Southwold today, they are used to announce the entry of the ministers.
This is a wonderful church to wander around in, the light and the air changing with the seasons, a suffused sense of the numinous presenting its different faces according to the time of day and time of year. Come here on a bright spring morning, or in the drowsy heat of a summer's day. Come on a cold winter afternoon as the colours fade and the smell of woodsmoke from neighbouring cottages weaves a spell above the old stone floors and woodwork. And before you leave, find the doorway in the south-west corner of the nave. It opens onto a low, narrow stairway. You can go up it. It leads up into the parvise storey of the south porch, now reappointed and dedicated as a tiny chapel, a peaceful spot to spend a few moments before continuing your journey.
You may be reading this entry in a far-off land; or perhaps you are here at home. Whatever, if you have not visited this church, then I urge you to do so. It is the most beautiful church in Suffolk, a wonderful art object, and it is always open in daylight. It remains one of the most significant medieval buildings in England. If you only visit one of Suffolk's churches, then make it this one
Simon Knott, 2014.
There is a point in our lives when we, the children, become the adults in the relationship with our parents.
It will come for most of us, no one tells you this will happen, and you are unprepared for it. But it comes
And each of us has a different relationship with our parents than everyone else, what's right for me, and my views, do not apply to you.
Yesterday, was the funeral of the person I have known longer than anyone else on this earth, now that my family is all gone. Margaret and Brian were married a few weeks before mine, and moved into the new build bungalow also a few weeks before my parents.
They also had one child, a son, and Douglas and I have been friends longer than I have been friends with anyone else, although he is a year younger than me.
I have my views on Margaret, but the reason I travelled back to Suffolk for her funeral, was to be there for Douggie, and give him the support he has given me through three weddings and two funerals.
Norfolk isn't far away, and the funeral and wake were taking place just a mile or two over the border from Suffolk, but the roads beyond Ipswich are poor, twisty and where there are accidents or roadworks, no real alternative routes.
I was also leaving just before six, so had to get across the Thames at Dartford and up the A12 during rush hour, so it wouldn't be easy. But at least there would be no rain.
I was up at five, dressed and washed, with time to drink a coffee before leaving. Loading the car with me and my camera bag, as I had plans in case I had time, to visit a church or two.
It was dark up the M20 to Dartford, and busy with traffic, but I made good time, and listened to a loop of old music podcasts all day, so chat and music kept me awake.
I got onto the M25 with no problem, and through the tunnels with only a slight slowdown, but on the other side there were queues.
Despite not wanting to spend money on a new railway, there is always money for road and junction improvements, even if it will just increase traffic. So it is that the M25/A12 junction is being upgraded, and with narrow lanes, speed restrictions, jams began a good four miles before the roadworks started.
I forced my way to the left hand lane, which became a filter lane, meaning it was much quicker than the remaining four lanes. But then came the roundabout. The roundabout under the motorway is the reason the improvements are needed, and queueing traffic blocks the junctions and causes even more backlogs.
Of course, traffic lights on roundabouts are never good ideas, so I was confronted with a wall of traffic, so when the light went green, I went in front of a track before it could shuffle forward and block more of the junction, then there was some clear road.
And ducking into the extreme left hand lane, I dodged past the queuing traffic that was blocking the exit from the A12, and onto clear road.
Yay.
The sky was clear, the sun about to rise, and it was going to be a glorious day.
Just north of Chelmsford, I stopped for breakfast: two sausage rolls and a coffee from Greggs, then filled up the tank and on my way north.
More traffic at Ipswich where the A12 meets the A14 to get over the Orwell, but then clear traffic again after ten minutes delay.
Soon, though, the road narrows to two lane blacktop, and all is well until you meet a slower vehicle. Like a tractor as we did soon after Whickham Market.
For 15 long minutes the tractor lead a growing snake of cars along the winding lanes until it pulled over and we could get past.
Blythburgh was always the marker when travelling back from Ipswich or beyond, that we were nearly home. he handsome church sits high, for Suffolk, overlooking the village and river which is mostly mudflats.
The busy A12 skirts close, but you get to the church via a narrow land, leaving the modern world far behind.
The church opened at nine, it was nearly half past, it was probably open before nine, and was open when I pushed the porch door.
Inside is an unspoilt space, grey wood that have witnessed the centuries so that their vigour has faded to almost no colour of all.
Its the roof people come for. Wooden beams and pairs of wooden angels. I have brought my big lens so to snap them.
My plan was to visit the large and impressive church in Southwold. I turned off the A12 and drove along the straight road into the town, where I found multiple sets of roadworks, and few places to park for a short time, anywhere near the church.
My back is achy, so I wanted somewhere close to park. Anyway, I drove round the town twice, found nowhere to park, so turned the car round and headed back north, until I came to South Cove.
South Cove is a small village, a few farms really, but has a fine, if rustic, well-proportioned church, set in a large churchyard.
And the church was open, so small the wide angle lens wasn't needed, and with windows close to the floor too, no big lens needed either.
Next town up is Kessingland, which until the 80s had the A12 running through the centre of it, but now a bypass lays to the west and the village is quiet. I don't think I had been of the main street, so I went in search of the church, and found it on Church Street.
Obviously.
I rarely research churches before I visit, so nothing prepared me for the interior of St Edmund.
It seems in the last two years, they church had sourced some banners with apt slogans on, banners which were made to look like large tapered ensigns, hanging from or along the supports of the roof.
A man was practicing on the organ, and the notes echoed round the church. Not only does the church have banners, it has ship's wheels and other nautical stuff, although most traditionalists won't like it, I think it hangs together, and if the congregation wants it thus, who are we to argue?
Next stop was South Cove, which I had forgotten I had visited before, so redid all my shots. But this time did see the panel featuring St Michael behind the font, where the rood steps began.
A small, perfect, church, perfect for a small country parish.
I take my shots and leave, driving back onto the A12 and heading into Lowestoft, my main task was to drive over the new bridge which spans Lake Lothing.
The town had been waiting since at least 1966 for a new bridge, and the 3rd crossing was opened in September, and offers fine views as you drive across.
I went to see the old family home. It has been renovated and looks splendid, and not much like it was when sold four years back, it looks cared for and lived in, which is what the buyer promised us he would do.
So then to the crematorium, a drive north through Gunton and past Hopton where Dougie lives, then through the housing estate behind the area hospital to the car park, and then wait.
Margaret was 89, had a long life, but friends of the same age are few, and families are now scattered. So, one can never be sure how many will attend. The chapel was half full at least, with people coming from Kent, Wiltshire and even California to be there.
The celebrant spoke for twenty minutes, saying nice things as they have to do. But, avoiding, or just hinting at faults. Whatever she had done in her life to Dougie, he still loved her, and he was in bits.
Afterward we lined up to shake his hand or give him and Pennie a hug, and allowed me to tell him he was the brother I never had. He was always there for me, and will be there for him.
More tears.
There was a wake at the pub in Hopton, but there was no one I knew other than Dougie and Penny, so I had a drink and made my excuses. These things are really for family and close friends, so I left at quarter to three, hoping to get home before midnight.
In the end, I made good time, I was going round Ipswich before four, and at the M25 junction less than an hour later, and was able to easily join it and zoom round to the bridge. No queues on the southbound side, but the queue northbound went all the way back to the M20 junction, so six mines.
I zoomed on.
I got home at ten past six, happy to have done it and go home in under three and a half hours. Dinner was defrosted ragu, pasta and reheated focaccia, which we were sitting down to eat twenty minutes after getting in.
Phew.
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Perhaps some counties have a church which sums them up. If there has to be one for Suffolk, it must be the church of the Most Holy Trinity, Blythburgh. Here is the late medieval Suffolk imagination writ large, as large as it gets, and not overwritten by the Anglican triumphalism of the 19th century. Blythburgh church is often compared with its near neighbour, St Edmund at Southwold, but this isn't a fair comparison - Southwold church is much grander, and full of urban confidence. Probably a better comparison is with St Margaret, Lowestoft, for there, too, the Reformation intervened before the tower could be rebuilt. The two churches have a lot in common, but Blythburgh has the saving grace. It is so fascinating, so stunningly beautiful, by virtue of a factor that is rare in Anglican parish churches: sheer neglect.
Holy Trinity, Blythburgh, is the church that Suffolk people know and love best, and because of this it has generated some extraordinary legends. The first is that Blythburgh, now a tiny village bisected by the fearsome A12 between London and the east coast ports, was once a thriving medieval town. This idea is used to explain the size of the church; in reality, it is almost certainly not the case. Blythburgh has always been small. But it did have an important medieval priory, and thus its church attracted enough wealthy piety on the eve of the Reformation to bankroll a spectacular rebuilding.
It is to Lavenham, Long Melford, Mildenhall, Southwold and here that we come to see the late 15th century Suffolk aesthetic in perfection. But for my money, Holy Trinity, Blythburgh, is the most significant medieval art object in the county, ranking alongside Salle in Norfolk. Look up at the clerestory; it seems impossible, there is so much glass, so little stone; and yet it rides the building with an air of permanence. Beneath, there is a coyness about the aisles that I prefer to the mathematics of Lavenham. Here, it could not have been done otherwise; it distils human architectural experience. If St Peter and St Paul at Lavenham is man talking to God, Holy Trinity at Blythburgh is God talking to man.
At the east end, a curious series of initials in Lombardic script stretch across the outer chancel wall. You can see an image of this at the top. It reads A-N-JS-B-S-T-M-S-A-H-K-R. This probably stands for Ad Nomina JesuS, Beati Sanctae Trinitas, Maria Sanctorem Anne Honorem Katherine Reconstructus ('In the name of the blessed Jesus, the Holy Trinity, and in honour of Holy Mary, Anne and Katherine, this was rebuilt'). A fanciful theory is that they are the initials of the wives of the donors. However, note the symbol of the Trinity in the T stone, and I think this is a clue to the whole piece.
Figures stand on pedestals atop the south side and east end. The most easterly is unusual, a crowned old man sitting on a throne directly on the gable end. This is a medieval image of God the Father, a rare survival. Moving westwards from here we find the Blessed Virgin in prayerful pose, Christ as the Saviour of the World holding an orb in one hand and blessing with the other, and then a collared bear with a ragged staff, a seated woodwose, another bear, this time with a collar and bell, and last of all a fox with a goose in its mouth, his jaws grasping the neck:
The porch is part of the late 15th century rebuilding, but it was considerably restored in the early 20th century. Interestingly, the angels crowning the battlements look medieval - but they weren't there in 1900, so must have come from somewhere else. Pretty much all the porch's features of interest date from this time. These include the small medieval font pressed into service as a holy water stoup, and image niche above the doors. This has been filled in more recent years by an image if the Holy Trinity; God the Father holds the Son suspended while a dove representing the Holy Spirit alights; you can see medieval versions of this at Framlingham and Little Glemham. Of all medieval imagery, this was the most frowned upon by puritans. An image of God the Father was thought the most suspicious of all idolatries. Indeed, as late as the 1870s, when the Reverend White edited the first popular edition of the Diary of William Dowsing, he actually congratulated Dowsing on destroying images of the Holy Trinity in the course of his 1644 progress through the counties of Suffolk and Cambridgeshire.
William Dowsing visited on the morning on April 9th, 1644. It was a Tuesday, and he had spent most of the week in the area. The previous day he'd been at Southwold and Walberswick to the east, but preceded his visit here with one to Blyford, which lies to the west, so he was probably staying overnight at the family home in Laxfield. He found twenty images in stained glass to take to task (a surprisingly small number, given the size of the place) and two hundred more that were inaccessible that morning (probably in the great east window). Three brass inscriptions incurred his wrath (but again, this is curious; there were many more) and he also ordered down the cross on the porch and the cross on the tower. Most significantly of all, he decided the angels in the roof should go.
Lots of Suffolk churches have angels in their roofs. None are like Blythburgh's. You step inside, and there they are, exactly as you've seen them in books and in photographs. They are awesome, breathtaking. There are twelve of them. Perhaps there were once twenty. How would you get them down if ordered to do so? The roof is so high, and the stencilling of IHS symbols would also have to go.
Perhaps this was already indistinct by the time Dowsing visited. Perhaps Tuesday, 9th of April 1644 was a dull day.
Several of the angels are peppered with lead shot. Here is another of those Suffolk legends; that Dowsing and the churchwardens fired muskets at the angels to try and bring them down. But when the angels were restored in the 1970s, the lead shot removed was found to be 18th century; contemporary with them there is a note in the churchwardens accounts that men were paid for shooting jackdaws living inside the building, so that probably explains where the shot came from. Here are some details of that wonderful roof:
The otherwise splendid church guide also repeats the error that the Holy Trinity symbol in the porch filled a gap that had been 'empty since 1644'. But there was certainly no image in it when Dowsing arrived here, or anywhere else in Suffolk; statues were completely outlawed by injunctions in the early years of the reign of Edward VI, almost a hundred years before the morning of Dowsing's visit.
Another feature used as evidence of puritan destruction is the ring fixed into the most westerly pillar of the north arcade. Cromwell's men stabled their horses here, apparently. Well, it almost certainly is a ring for tying horses to, and the broken bricks at the cleared west end also suggest this; but there is no reason to think that Cromwell and the puritans were responsible. For a full century before Cromwell, and for nearly two hundred years afterwards, a church as big as this would have had a multitude of uses. Holy Trinity was built for the rituals of the Catholic church; once these were no longer allowed, a village like Blythburgh, which can never have had more than 500 people, would have seen it as an asset in other ways. It was only with the 19th century sacramental revival brought about by the Oxford Movement that we started getting all holy again about our parish churches. Perhaps it was used as an overnight stables for passing travellers on the main road; not an un-Christian use for it to be put to, I think.
In August 1577, a great storm brought down the steeple, which fell into the church and damaged the font. This was at the height of Elizabethan superstition, and the devil was blamed; his hoof marks can still be seen on the church door. Supposedly, a black dog ran through the church, killing two parishioners; he was seen the same day at St Mary, Bungay. Black Shuck is the East Anglian devil dog, the feared hound of the marshes; and Holy Trinity is the self-styled Cathedral of the Marshes, so it is appropriate that he appeared here. You can see where the font has been broken. You can also see that this was one of the rare, beautiful seven sacrament fonts, similar in style to the one at Westhall; but, like those at neighbouring Wenhaston and Southwold, it has been completely stripped of imagery. Almost certainly, this was in the 1540s, but there is a story that the font at Wenhaston was chiselled clean as part of the 19th century restoration. More importantly in any case, the storm, or the dog, or the devil, damaged the roof; it would not be properly repaired for more than 400 years. Throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, accounts note that Holy Trinity is not impregnable to the weather. By the 19th century, parishioners attended divine service with umbrellas. By the 1880s, it was a positively dangerous building to be in, and the Bishop of Norwich ordered it closed.
Why had Holy Trinity not been restored? Simply, this is a big church, with a tiny village. There was no rich patron, and in any case the parishioners had a passion for Methodism. Probably, repairs had been mooted, but not a wholesale restoration as we have seen at Lavenham, Long Melford and Southwold. By the 1880s, attention in England had turned to the preservation of medieval detail; in short, restorations were not as ignorant as they had been a quarter of a century earlier. Suggestions that Holy Trinity should be restored in the manner of the other three were blocked by the Society for the Preservation of Ancient Buildings, and this owed a lot to the energy of William Morris, the Society's secretary.
The slow, patient restoration of this building took the best part of a century; indeed, when I first visited in the 1980s I was still aware of a sense of decay.
Nothing could be further from the truth today. You step into a wide, white, open space, one of England's great church interiors. There, high above you, is the glorious roof and the angels of God. The brick floors spread around the scraped font, which still bears its dedicatory inscription and standing places for participants. You turn into the central gangway, and more than twenty empty indents for brasses stretch before you. Dowsing can be blamed for the destruction of hardly any of them. In reality, you see the work of 18th and 19th century thieves and collectors.
The bench-ends are superb. The benches themselves were reconstructed in the late 19th century, supposedly from the main post of Westleton windmill, but the ends are some of the county's finest medieval images. There are partial sets of basically three series: the Seven Deadly Sins, the Seven Works of Mercy, and the Labours of the Seasons. There are also angels bearing symbols of the Holy Trinity and the Crown. There are other figures too, obscure and fragmentary and whose purpose is unclear, as if surviving figments of a broken dream. The quality of what remains makes you grieve for what has been lost.
The rood screen is a disappointment; most of it is modern, and the medieval bits perfunctory and scoured. Having said this, note how tiny the exit from the north aisle rood loft stair is. Also at this end of the church, a scattering of medieval glass, mainly angels. There is more in the south aisle, including a collection of shields of the Holy Trinity:
But step through the central aisle to see something remarkable. The priest and choir stalls are fronted by exquisite carvings of the Apostles, the Evangelists, John the Baptist, St Stephen, Mary Queen of Heaven and Christ in Majesty. Seeing these eighteen carvings is a bit like gobbling up a very large box of chocolates, but it is worth stopping to consider quite how genuine they all are. For a start, there could not have been choir stalls here in medieval times, and in any case we know that these desks and their frontages were in the north aisle chapel until the 19th century. They were used as school benches in the 17th century; they still bear holes for inkpots, and the graffiti of a bored Dutch child (his father was probably working on draining the marshes) is dated 1665. There is nothing at all like them anywhere else in Suffolk.
Whatever, the east end of the chancel and aisles are thrillingly modern, wholly devotional. In the north aisle, traditionally the Hopton chantry, extraordinary friezes of skeletons become symbols of the four evangelists behind the altar. Beside them is Peter Ball's beautiful Madonna and Child. Separating the south aisle chapel from the sanctuary is is one of Suffolk's biggest Easter sepulchres, tomb of the Hoptons. Behind the high altar, branches arranged like huge stag antlers spread dramatically. It is all just about perfect. Tucked to one side of the organ is a clockjack; Suffolk has two, and the other is down-river at Southwold. They date from the late 17th century, and presumably once struck the hours; at high church Blythburgh and Southwold today, they are used to announce the entry of the ministers.
This is a wonderful church to wander around in, the light and the air changing with the seasons, a suffused sense of the numinous presenting its different faces according to the time of day and time of year. Come here on a bright spring morning, or in the drowsy heat of a summer's day. Come on a cold winter afternoon as the colours fade and the smell of woodsmoke from neighbouring cottages weaves a spell above the old stone floors and woodwork. And before you leave, find the doorway in the south-west corner of the nave. It opens onto a low, narrow stairway. You can go up it. It leads up into the parvise storey of the south porch, now reappointed and dedicated as a tiny chapel, a peaceful spot to spend a few moments before continuing your journey.
You may be reading this entry in a far-off land; or perhaps you are here at home. Whatever, if you have not visited this church, then I urge you to do so. It is the most beautiful church in Suffolk, a wonderful art object, and it is always open in daylight. It remains one of the most significant medieval buildings in England. If you only visit one of Suffolk's churches, then make it this one
Simon Knott, 2014.
A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;
A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;
A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away;
A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.
Ecclesiastes 3:1-8
What's the grown-up excursion?
I went to Shonan,Kanagawa Pref. with my friends love to take photos. On Tueseday in daytime, we all have another work but we used our time resourcefully and make it!
We were so excited such as an excursion for kids. Our excursion was more free and easier than the kids' one.
We got off ENODEN at the Kamakura High Shcool and walked through the residential area on the hill side to the Shichirigahama Beach. Then had a lunch in the restaurant with ocean viewing balcony at the hillside. We talked about photos, cameras, works and something else I forgot.
It was a great time to take photos with feeling the sea breeze.
*********HP*********
hana-photography.com
*********My published book is as follows;*********
hana's neiborhood photoing in Tokyo EI publishing(original title is "hanaの東京ご近所写真散歩")
There are more than 100 photos and essays in it! Get and feel the air of ordinary life in Tokyo.
www.amazon.co.jp/dp/4777909271?tag=hana009-22 &camp=24...;
*********My photos are on the magasines as follows;*********
・NIKON D90 manual ( colored photos for 5pages long)
see the book nippon-camera 8124450
・monthly NIPPON camera Sep.2009 edition ( colored photos for 5pages long)
see the book monthly nippon-camera 1596054
・monthly Digital Camera Magasin Sep. 2009 ( colored photos for 5pages long and interview)
www.impressjapan.jp/books/270809
・amazon.jp for interviewing
There is a point in our lives when we, the children, become the adults in the relationship with our parents.
It will come for most of us, no one tells you this will happen, and you are unprepared for it. But it comes
And each of us has a different relationship with our parents than everyone else, what's right for me, and my views, do not apply to you.
Yesterday, was the funeral of the person I have known longer than anyone else on this earth, now that my family is all gone. Margaret and Brian were married a few weeks before mine, and moved into the new build bungalow also a few weeks before my parents.
They also had one child, a son, and Douglas and I have been friends longer than I have been friends with anyone else, although he is a year younger than me.
I have my views on Margaret, but the reason I travelled back to Suffolk for her funeral, was to be there for Douggie, and give him the support he has given me through three weddings and two funerals.
Norfolk isn't far away, and the funeral and wake were taking place just a mile or two over the border from Suffolk, but the roads beyond Ipswich are poor, twisty and where there are accidents or roadworks, no real alternative routes.
I was also leaving just before six, so had to get across the Thames at Dartford and up the A12 during rush hour, so it wouldn't be easy. But at least there would be no rain.
I was up at five, dressed and washed, with time to drink a coffee before leaving. Loading the car with me and my camera bag, as I had plans in case I had time, to visit a church or two.
It was dark up the M20 to Dartford, and busy with traffic, but I made good time, and listened to a loop of old music podcasts all day, so chat and music kept me awake.
I got onto the M25 with no problem, and through the tunnels with only a slight slowdown, but on the other side there were queues.
Despite not wanting to spend money on a new railway, there is always money for road and junction improvements, even if it will just increase traffic. So it is that the M25/A12 junction is being upgraded, and with narrow lanes, speed restrictions, jams began a good four miles before the roadworks started.
I forced my way to the left hand lane, which became a filter lane, meaning it was much quicker than the remaining four lanes. But then came the roundabout. The roundabout under the motorway is the reason the improvements are needed, and queueing traffic blocks the junctions and causes even more backlogs.
Of course, traffic lights on roundabouts are never good ideas, so I was confronted with a wall of traffic, so when the light went green, I went in front of a track before it could shuffle forward and block more of the junction, then there was some clear road.
And ducking into the extreme left hand lane, I dodged past the queuing traffic that was blocking the exit from the A12, and onto clear road.
Yay.
The sky was clear, the sun about to rise, and it was going to be a glorious day.
Just north of Chelmsford, I stopped for breakfast: two sausage rolls and a coffee from Greggs, then filled up the tank and on my way north.
More traffic at Ipswich where the A12 meets the A14 to get over the Orwell, but then clear traffic again after ten minutes delay.
Soon, though, the road narrows to two lane blacktop, and all is well until you meet a slower vehicle. Like a tractor as we did soon after Whickham Market.
For 15 long minutes the tractor lead a growing snake of cars along the winding lanes until it pulled over and we could get past.
Blythburgh was always the marker when travelling back from Ipswich or beyond, that we were nearly home. he handsome church sits high, for Suffolk, overlooking the village and river which is mostly mudflats.
The busy A12 skirts close, but you get to the church via a narrow land, leaving the modern world far behind.
The church opened at nine, it was nearly half past, it was probably open before nine, and was open when I pushed the porch door.
Inside is an unspoilt space, grey wood that have witnessed the centuries so that their vigour has faded to almost no colour of all.
Its the roof people come for. Wooden beams and pairs of wooden angels. I have brought my big lens so to snap them.
My plan was to visit the large and impressive church in Southwold. I turned off the A12 and drove along the straight road into the town, where I found multiple sets of roadworks, and few places to park for a short time, anywhere near the church.
My back is achy, so I wanted somewhere close to park. Anyway, I drove round the town twice, found nowhere to park, so turned the car round and headed back north, until I came to South Cove.
South Cove is a small village, a few farms really, but has a fine, if rustic, well-proportioned church, set in a large churchyard.
And the church was open, so small the wide angle lens wasn't needed, and with windows close to the floor too, no big lens needed either.
Next town up is Kessingland, which until the 80s had the A12 running through the centre of it, but now a bypass lays to the west and the village is quiet. I don't think I had been of the main street, so I went in search of the church, and found it on Church Street.
Obviously.
I rarely research churches before I visit, so nothing prepared me for the interior of St Edmund.
It seems in the last two years, they church had sourced some banners with apt slogans on, banners which were made to look like large tapered ensigns, hanging from or along the supports of the roof.
A man was practicing on the organ, and the notes echoed round the church. Not only does the church have banners, it has ship's wheels and other nautical stuff, although most traditionalists won't like it, I think it hangs together, and if the congregation wants it thus, who are we to argue?
Next stop was South Cove, which I had forgotten I had visited before, so redid all my shots. But this time did see the panel featuring St Michael behind the font, where the rood steps began.
A small, perfect, church, perfect for a small country parish.
I take my shots and leave, driving back onto the A12 and heading into Lowestoft, my main task was to drive over the new bridge which spans Lake Lothing.
The town had been waiting since at least 1966 for a new bridge, and the 3rd crossing was opened in September, and offers fine views as you drive across.
I went to see the old family home. It has been renovated and looks splendid, and not much like it was when sold four years back, it looks cared for and lived in, which is what the buyer promised us he would do.
So then to the crematorium, a drive north through Gunton and past Hopton where Dougie lives, then through the housing estate behind the area hospital to the car park, and then wait.
Margaret was 89, had a long life, but friends of the same age are few, and families are now scattered. So, one can never be sure how many will attend. The chapel was half full at least, with people coming from Kent, Wiltshire and even California to be there.
The celebrant spoke for twenty minutes, saying nice things as they have to do. But, avoiding, or just hinting at faults. Whatever she had done in her life to Dougie, he still loved her, and he was in bits.
Afterward we lined up to shake his hand or give him and Pennie a hug, and allowed me to tell him he was the brother I never had. He was always there for me, and will be there for him.
More tears.
There was a wake at the pub in Hopton, but there was no one I knew other than Dougie and Penny, so I had a drink and made my excuses. These things are really for family and close friends, so I left at quarter to three, hoping to get home before midnight.
In the end, I made good time, I was going round Ipswich before four, and at the M25 junction less than an hour later, and was able to easily join it and zoom round to the bridge. No queues on the southbound side, but the queue northbound went all the way back to the M20 junction, so six mines.
I zoomed on.
I got home at ten past six, happy to have done it and go home in under three and a half hours. Dinner was defrosted ragu, pasta and reheated focaccia, which we were sitting down to eat twenty minutes after getting in.
Phew.
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Perhaps some counties have a church which sums them up. If there has to be one for Suffolk, it must be the church of the Most Holy Trinity, Blythburgh. Here is the late medieval Suffolk imagination writ large, as large as it gets, and not overwritten by the Anglican triumphalism of the 19th century. Blythburgh church is often compared with its near neighbour, St Edmund at Southwold, but this isn't a fair comparison - Southwold church is much grander, and full of urban confidence. Probably a better comparison is with St Margaret, Lowestoft, for there, too, the Reformation intervened before the tower could be rebuilt. The two churches have a lot in common, but Blythburgh has the saving grace. It is so fascinating, so stunningly beautiful, by virtue of a factor that is rare in Anglican parish churches: sheer neglect.
Holy Trinity, Blythburgh, is the church that Suffolk people know and love best, and because of this it has generated some extraordinary legends. The first is that Blythburgh, now a tiny village bisected by the fearsome A12 between London and the east coast ports, was once a thriving medieval town. This idea is used to explain the size of the church; in reality, it is almost certainly not the case. Blythburgh has always been small. But it did have an important medieval priory, and thus its church attracted enough wealthy piety on the eve of the Reformation to bankroll a spectacular rebuilding.
It is to Lavenham, Long Melford, Mildenhall, Southwold and here that we come to see the late 15th century Suffolk aesthetic in perfection. But for my money, Holy Trinity, Blythburgh, is the most significant medieval art object in the county, ranking alongside Salle in Norfolk. Look up at the clerestory; it seems impossible, there is so much glass, so little stone; and yet it rides the building with an air of permanence. Beneath, there is a coyness about the aisles that I prefer to the mathematics of Lavenham. Here, it could not have been done otherwise; it distils human architectural experience. If St Peter and St Paul at Lavenham is man talking to God, Holy Trinity at Blythburgh is God talking to man.
At the east end, a curious series of initials in Lombardic script stretch across the outer chancel wall. You can see an image of this at the top. It reads A-N-JS-B-S-T-M-S-A-H-K-R. This probably stands for Ad Nomina JesuS, Beati Sanctae Trinitas, Maria Sanctorem Anne Honorem Katherine Reconstructus ('In the name of the blessed Jesus, the Holy Trinity, and in honour of Holy Mary, Anne and Katherine, this was rebuilt'). A fanciful theory is that they are the initials of the wives of the donors. However, note the symbol of the Trinity in the T stone, and I think this is a clue to the whole piece.
Figures stand on pedestals atop the south side and east end. The most easterly is unusual, a crowned old man sitting on a throne directly on the gable end. This is a medieval image of God the Father, a rare survival. Moving westwards from here we find the Blessed Virgin in prayerful pose, Christ as the Saviour of the World holding an orb in one hand and blessing with the other, and then a collared bear with a ragged staff, a seated woodwose, another bear, this time with a collar and bell, and last of all a fox with a goose in its mouth, his jaws grasping the neck:
The porch is part of the late 15th century rebuilding, but it was considerably restored in the early 20th century. Interestingly, the angels crowning the battlements look medieval - but they weren't there in 1900, so must have come from somewhere else. Pretty much all the porch's features of interest date from this time. These include the small medieval font pressed into service as a holy water stoup, and image niche above the doors. This has been filled in more recent years by an image if the Holy Trinity; God the Father holds the Son suspended while a dove representing the Holy Spirit alights; you can see medieval versions of this at Framlingham and Little Glemham. Of all medieval imagery, this was the most frowned upon by puritans. An image of God the Father was thought the most suspicious of all idolatries. Indeed, as late as the 1870s, when the Reverend White edited the first popular edition of the Diary of William Dowsing, he actually congratulated Dowsing on destroying images of the Holy Trinity in the course of his 1644 progress through the counties of Suffolk and Cambridgeshire.
William Dowsing visited on the morning on April 9th, 1644. It was a Tuesday, and he had spent most of the week in the area. The previous day he'd been at Southwold and Walberswick to the east, but preceded his visit here with one to Blyford, which lies to the west, so he was probably staying overnight at the family home in Laxfield. He found twenty images in stained glass to take to task (a surprisingly small number, given the size of the place) and two hundred more that were inaccessible that morning (probably in the great east window). Three brass inscriptions incurred his wrath (but again, this is curious; there were many more) and he also ordered down the cross on the porch and the cross on the tower. Most significantly of all, he decided the angels in the roof should go.
Lots of Suffolk churches have angels in their roofs. None are like Blythburgh's. You step inside, and there they are, exactly as you've seen them in books and in photographs. They are awesome, breathtaking. There are twelve of them. Perhaps there were once twenty. How would you get them down if ordered to do so? The roof is so high, and the stencilling of IHS symbols would also have to go.
Perhaps this was already indistinct by the time Dowsing visited. Perhaps Tuesday, 9th of April 1644 was a dull day.
Several of the angels are peppered with lead shot. Here is another of those Suffolk legends; that Dowsing and the churchwardens fired muskets at the angels to try and bring them down. But when the angels were restored in the 1970s, the lead shot removed was found to be 18th century; contemporary with them there is a note in the churchwardens accounts that men were paid for shooting jackdaws living inside the building, so that probably explains where the shot came from. Here are some details of that wonderful roof:
The otherwise splendid church guide also repeats the error that the Holy Trinity symbol in the porch filled a gap that had been 'empty since 1644'. But there was certainly no image in it when Dowsing arrived here, or anywhere else in Suffolk; statues were completely outlawed by injunctions in the early years of the reign of Edward VI, almost a hundred years before the morning of Dowsing's visit.
Another feature used as evidence of puritan destruction is the ring fixed into the most westerly pillar of the north arcade. Cromwell's men stabled their horses here, apparently. Well, it almost certainly is a ring for tying horses to, and the broken bricks at the cleared west end also suggest this; but there is no reason to think that Cromwell and the puritans were responsible. For a full century before Cromwell, and for nearly two hundred years afterwards, a church as big as this would have had a multitude of uses. Holy Trinity was built for the rituals of the Catholic church; once these were no longer allowed, a village like Blythburgh, which can never have had more than 500 people, would have seen it as an asset in other ways. It was only with the 19th century sacramental revival brought about by the Oxford Movement that we started getting all holy again about our parish churches. Perhaps it was used as an overnight stables for passing travellers on the main road; not an un-Christian use for it to be put to, I think.
In August 1577, a great storm brought down the steeple, which fell into the church and damaged the font. This was at the height of Elizabethan superstition, and the devil was blamed; his hoof marks can still be seen on the church door. Supposedly, a black dog ran through the church, killing two parishioners; he was seen the same day at St Mary, Bungay. Black Shuck is the East Anglian devil dog, the feared hound of the marshes; and Holy Trinity is the self-styled Cathedral of the Marshes, so it is appropriate that he appeared here. You can see where the font has been broken. You can also see that this was one of the rare, beautiful seven sacrament fonts, similar in style to the one at Westhall; but, like those at neighbouring Wenhaston and Southwold, it has been completely stripped of imagery. Almost certainly, this was in the 1540s, but there is a story that the font at Wenhaston was chiselled clean as part of the 19th century restoration. More importantly in any case, the storm, or the dog, or the devil, damaged the roof; it would not be properly repaired for more than 400 years. Throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, accounts note that Holy Trinity is not impregnable to the weather. By the 19th century, parishioners attended divine service with umbrellas. By the 1880s, it was a positively dangerous building to be in, and the Bishop of Norwich ordered it closed.
Why had Holy Trinity not been restored? Simply, this is a big church, with a tiny village. There was no rich patron, and in any case the parishioners had a passion for Methodism. Probably, repairs had been mooted, but not a wholesale restoration as we have seen at Lavenham, Long Melford and Southwold. By the 1880s, attention in England had turned to the preservation of medieval detail; in short, restorations were not as ignorant as they had been a quarter of a century earlier. Suggestions that Holy Trinity should be restored in the manner of the other three were blocked by the Society for the Preservation of Ancient Buildings, and this owed a lot to the energy of William Morris, the Society's secretary.
The slow, patient restoration of this building took the best part of a century; indeed, when I first visited in the 1980s I was still aware of a sense of decay.
Nothing could be further from the truth today. You step into a wide, white, open space, one of England's great church interiors. There, high above you, is the glorious roof and the angels of God. The brick floors spread around the scraped font, which still bears its dedicatory inscription and standing places for participants. You turn into the central gangway, and more than twenty empty indents for brasses stretch before you. Dowsing can be blamed for the destruction of hardly any of them. In reality, you see the work of 18th and 19th century thieves and collectors.
The bench-ends are superb. The benches themselves were reconstructed in the late 19th century, supposedly from the main post of Westleton windmill, but the ends are some of the county's finest medieval images. There are partial sets of basically three series: the Seven Deadly Sins, the Seven Works of Mercy, and the Labours of the Seasons. There are also angels bearing symbols of the Holy Trinity and the Crown. There are other figures too, obscure and fragmentary and whose purpose is unclear, as if surviving figments of a broken dream. The quality of what remains makes you grieve for what has been lost.
The rood screen is a disappointment; most of it is modern, and the medieval bits perfunctory and scoured. Having said this, note how tiny the exit from the north aisle rood loft stair is. Also at this end of the church, a scattering of medieval glass, mainly angels. There is more in the south aisle, including a collection of shields of the Holy Trinity:
But step through the central aisle to see something remarkable. The priest and choir stalls are fronted by exquisite carvings of the Apostles, the Evangelists, John the Baptist, St Stephen, Mary Queen of Heaven and Christ in Majesty. Seeing these eighteen carvings is a bit like gobbling up a very large box of chocolates, but it is worth stopping to consider quite how genuine they all are. For a start, there could not have been choir stalls here in medieval times, and in any case we know that these desks and their frontages were in the north aisle chapel until the 19th century. They were used as school benches in the 17th century; they still bear holes for inkpots, and the graffiti of a bored Dutch child (his father was probably working on draining the marshes) is dated 1665. There is nothing at all like them anywhere else in Suffolk.
Whatever, the east end of the chancel and aisles are thrillingly modern, wholly devotional. In the north aisle, traditionally the Hopton chantry, extraordinary friezes of skeletons become symbols of the four evangelists behind the altar. Beside them is Peter Ball's beautiful Madonna and Child. Separating the south aisle chapel from the sanctuary is is one of Suffolk's biggest Easter sepulchres, tomb of the Hoptons. Behind the high altar, branches arranged like huge stag antlers spread dramatically. It is all just about perfect. Tucked to one side of the organ is a clockjack; Suffolk has two, and the other is down-river at Southwold. They date from the late 17th century, and presumably once struck the hours; at high church Blythburgh and Southwold today, they are used to announce the entry of the ministers.
This is a wonderful church to wander around in, the light and the air changing with the seasons, a suffused sense of the numinous presenting its different faces according to the time of day and time of year. Come here on a bright spring morning, or in the drowsy heat of a summer's day. Come on a cold winter afternoon as the colours fade and the smell of woodsmoke from neighbouring cottages weaves a spell above the old stone floors and woodwork. And before you leave, find the doorway in the south-west corner of the nave. It opens onto a low, narrow stairway. You can go up it. It leads up into the parvise storey of the south porch, now reappointed and dedicated as a tiny chapel, a peaceful spot to spend a few moments before continuing your journey.
You may be reading this entry in a far-off land; or perhaps you are here at home. Whatever, if you have not visited this church, then I urge you to do so. It is the most beautiful church in Suffolk, a wonderful art object, and it is always open in daylight. It remains one of the most significant medieval buildings in England. If you only visit one of Suffolk's churches, then make it this one
Simon Knott, 2014.
Last Monday Mr Chiots and I stopped by a local orchard to buy some apples to make applesauce & apple butter. It’s a great little orchard that is as organic as you can get and still have apples. They use the bare minimum of treatments on their trees. They also try to keep their business small and do things the way they’ve always done it. It’s such a cute little place, when you drive up you’re greeted by 5 dogs that are very happy to see you.
All the apples are stacked under a huge tree beside their house. The owner explained to us that he could buy a second cooler, but then he’d have higher electric bills and then he would have to work more. So he just stores his apples outside and sells what he can before they all go bad.
They had cats patrolling the crates the crates for mice and I’m sure the dogs kept the deer, opossums and raccoons away.
check out my blog: www.ChiotsRun.com
A martial arts education of intelligent curriculum curated by Sensei Dan Rominski at his martial art school located in Rutherford NJ. Visit our website www.thedojo.org Self-Defense for children at (201) 933-3050 or email SenseiDan@TheDOJO.org
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