Given how long a tractor at a tractor pull can have its front wheels in the air, you could be forgiven for calling a driver a pilot.

Given all the rumours, I thought I'd go and establish some facts today, starting with a trip to Sunray Travel's depot in Woking, the old Countryliner one.

 

The large group of VOR buses compiled:

1) Dart SLF/Marshall Capital DM43 (V361 DLH).

2) MPD DP35 (T337 TVM).

3) MAN 14.220/East Lancs Myllennium MEM7 (RX53 LFH).

4) MAN 14.220/MCV Evolution MRM2 (AE06 VPZ).

5) MAN 14.220/East Lancs Myllennium MEM11 (MM53 BLU).

6) Dart SLF/Plaxton Pointer DP42 (P307 HDP).

7) Mercedes-Benz Sprinter BU04 UTP.

8) MPD DP10 (W921 JNF).

 

In this shot, from left to right, are DP10 (W921 JNF), BU04 UTP (mostly hidden), MEM11 (MM53 BLU), MRM2 (AE06 VPZ) and MEM7 (RX53 LFH).

 

MRM2 has never actually run in Surrey. It arrived here when the remnants of Countryliner, RJB (UK) Ltd, finally closed in January 2013. I saw it heading through Woking on tow/on a low loader on its way in. This is the clearest shot of it I've managed so far!

 

Monument Way East, Maybury, Woking, Surrey.

Situated outside the Broken Hill Council Chambers are sculptures created by Broken Hill artist Geoff De Main, commemorating the Syndicate of Seven; the name given to the original members of the Broken Hill Mining Company who pegged mining leases Block 10 to 16 along the Line of Lode in September 1883.

 

These leases covered the exposed orebody and the whole of the easily worked ore, which would become known as the richest deposit of silver, lead, and zinc in the world.

 

The members, who were all workmates at the Mount Gipps Station, were:

 

George McCulloch (station manager)

Charles Rasp (boundary rider)

Philip Charley (station hand)

George Urquhart (sheep overseer)

George Lind (bookkeeper)

David James (dam sinking contractor)

James Poole (employed by David James)

 

All agreed to contribute £70 each towards the venture.

 

In 1884, the syndicate agreed to divide their shareholding and eventually there were fourteen equal partners but only Rasp, McCulloch, Charley, James and Poole retained and original shareholding. The Broken Hill Proprietary Company Limited was formed in 1885 and the chimney of BHP's first works office survives near the old slag heap.

 

The BHP Mine's richest ore was exhausted by 1908 and the company began to look eslwhere for profit. The wealth won at Broken Hill by BHP established Australia's iron and steel industry. BHP ceased operations in Broken Hill in 1939. In 2001, the company became a part of BHP Billiton, the world's largest resource company.

 

Charles Rasp:

 

Charles Rasp (1846 - 1907), prospector, was born on the 7th of October 1846 at Stuttgart, Duchy of Württemberg, where he was educated. A clerk in a chemical firm, he later trained as an edible-oil technologist with a large chemical manufacturing company in Hamburg, where he worked in the export department as he was fluent in English and French. Rasp was delicate and the bitter winter of 1868 brought on a serious lung weakness, so he decided to leave Germany for a warmer climate.

 

Rasp arrived in Melbourne in 1869 and found work pruning vines. After two years on agricultural properties he tried the Victorian goldfields but the days of the big strikes were over and the slushy diggings gave him a hacking cough. On advice from friends he moved to New South Wales. He worked on Walwa station, then wandered from place to place until engaged as a boundary rider on Mount Gipps station in the Barrier Ranges in the far west. After discoveries of silver at Silverton and Day Dream every station-hand in the area searched for indications of the metal.

 

When his duties led him to the 'hill', Rasp often examined the outcrop. No geologist, he was observant and on the 5th of September 1883 pegged the first block on the 'Broken Hill', which he thought was a mountain of tin. On advice of the Mount Gipps manager, George McCulloch, a 'syndicate of seven' was formed and seven blocks pegged to include the whole ridge. Each member subscribed £70 to the unregistered 'Broken Hill Mining Co.' and paid £1 a week towards working the claim.

 

The syndicate had little success for some months and the Adelaide analysts' reports were disappointing as they only tested for tin. The discovery of rich silver ore in 1885 led to the formation of the Broken Hill Proprietary Co., with a capital of 16,000 £20 shares, 14,000 of which went to the syndicate, and to a rapid growth of the mining industry at Broken Hill. Within five years Rasp had made a fortune.

 

He was prominently connected with Broken Hill for some years. With a large number of shares in the company, he moved to Adelaide when dividends were declared; he married Agnes Maria Louise Klevesahl there on the 22nd of July 1886. They bought a house, Willyama, where his wife entertained in the grand manner. Rasp preferred his library of French and German books. For some years he had mining interests in Western Australia.

 

Leaving an estate of £48,000, Rasp died suddenly from a heart attack at his residence on the 22nd of May 1907 and was buried in North Road cemetery, Adelaide. He was childless. In 1914 his widow married Count von Zedtwitz and died in Adelaide in 1936. Oil paintings of Rasp and his wife are in the Charles Rasp Memorial Library, Broken Hill.

 

Source: City Of Broken Hill & Australian Dictionary Of Biography.

Got given a box full of autochromes..on closer inspection (in totally darkness) it appears that thevie been shot yet never deved (according to the user guide that was stuffed in the box as well) So wondering if I can find a genus to dev one of these....

Back when I were a nipper, I was given a book, a big book of trains from around the world, and on the cover was a Japanese Bullet Train, and I have always wanted to ride one ever since. There is one at the NRM in York, but that doesn't work, so for me, the real highlight of this trip would be riding on a real bullet train. Several times. I was so excited I was vibrating.

 

After the usual breakfast at the Gate Hotel, we took the Metro to Ueno then the overground line to Tokyo Station, simply re-tracing our steps of two day's before on the guided walk. Heck, we were experienced Metro travellers now, we knew stuff. And after sending the cases on via the courier, we only had either a night case of a bag of camera equipment with us to weigh us down.

 

And we did it will little problem and with an hour to spare, with the idea that I could snap the bullet trains to death while we waited.

 

At the Shinkansen platforms, we validate our pass and are let through; we had reserved seats the day before, so we could relax and wait for our train happy that we would have a seat. Which meant I could go to the end of the platforms to take shots. I could also go to the middle and all point between to snap away, Man, it were proper lush. I just knew that me deal old Dad would have loved this, waiting on the end of platforms in Tokyo, waiting for the next Bullet train to either arrive or leave.

 

Not only was I snapping them, but within the hour, we would be climbing on one to travel south to Kyoto.

 

At 11:03 we lined up where it said on the platform our carriage would stop, which it did We filed on, slumped into our armchair-like seats, all of which pointed the direction of travel. And we zoomed off, accelerating wat seemed as fast as a Formula 1 car, but this being an 18 coach train. I waited with excitement untol it was time for the train to depart; expecting something sensational, but we didn't even hear the doors swish closed; only with a wave from the guard on the platform, the train pulled away, rapidly accelerating along the platform and out into the grayness outside.

 

The line weaved through the massive tower blocks we had seen on the previous day, I tried to recognise the World Trade Centre, but it must have looked like any of a dozen other buildings. The suburbs slipped by, then we were in the countryside, nipping in and out of tunnels, past steep hillsides planted with green tea plants.

 

We stopped at various stations, picking a few more people up, but our coach was less than half full.

 

Sadly, outside it rained, and so Mount Fuji was hidden from view, we had even been given tickets on the left side of the train so we would be on the correct side for the view. Maybe on our way back? Who knows?

 

Every time a member of staff came though the carriage, they would stop at the door the other end of the compartment, then and salute; we don't get that on the train up to London back home, I thought. Not only that, they are smartly turned out with white gloves. Smart.

 

I was happy enough on the train, looking out the window watching the countryside slip by, changing from the urban landscape of Totyo, to the rolling hills further south and then the endless paddy fields as we neared Kyoto, where we were to get off. It was still pouring with rain, with no views of mountains or volcanoes; mores the pity.

 

We arrive at 14:00, and right away find somewhere to have lunch; a noodle bar on the station, which again was very good indeed as it was more noodles and tempura prawns. We order by pointing at pictures on the menu, then pay by thrusting wads of notes at the lady behind the till. She bows. We bow. We all bow.

 

We find the taxi rank and show him the address to the hotel, so we set off into the drizzly grey weather. and the heavy traffic, in which we crawled to the centre of town and our hotel.

 

We have no trouble in checking in, and our cases were waiting. Jools decides to do some washing as the wash room is one our fllor, and we had already accumilated several pounds of loose change with which to feed the machines.

 

With the portable wifi device that the tour company had provided us with, we were able to get online, get the news, check mails ad have the Radcliffe and Maconie show streamed; almost like being home.

 

So once we had made a coffee, we went out into the early evening to see what was around. What we found was a covered shopping area, several streets in fact, all lined with shops and all having neon signs flashing away. Three guitar shops, two record shops among others.

 

It was a modern shopping centre, along three covered roads. On one of them there was a temple, just taking up the place where you would expect a shop.

 

In the narrow streets beyond, we spy a shop selling creme brulee donuts, so Jools and i have one and a coffee, which is just dandy.

 

We walk back to the hotel under our newly purchased umbrellas, thus keeping dry. It was beginning to get dark, and the neon lights reflected off the road in a most attractive way.

 

Later in the evening, we decide not to go out into the pouring rain, wandering around a strange new city with little idea of where we would be going, so instead we go to the restaurant in the basement, and order pork or something which should have come with vegetables. It did, but just one mange tout, which counts as one of your five a day; right?.

 

We round the night off with cards in our room accompanied by cheap local beer bought from a drug store.

Given the size of this individual, it must've been recently weaned. Three-toeds are excellent swimmers and are found in floodplains, while the the Two-toeds prefer high ground that does not flood...

Given that it was in storage for a while, I can’t seem to get enough of this lovely item at the moment. Here it is once again, although it looks exactly the same from the back as it does from the front.

Surprisingly abundant given how old most of them are now, although they were everywhere for ages back until the early 2000s, even then they were still very common OAP chariots. I always did like the styled steel wheel these things had, a shame that things like that are very much of the past now.

for this week, I asked for and received a challenge by [http://www.flickr.com/photos/jessicachuppy/] to do a nature setting, given that a lot of images have been in and around the homestead. I had a pretty good idea for setting and had the week off, but unfortunately ran into a passing rarity - thunderstorms - for a good part of the week. I always knew I had the nearby park for a backup, and was able to get out and make this shot by the river. It kind of looks like Augie's coming back in from a dip, but there's more than a few signs along the way indicating "no swimming", and, well, it's not really clean enough for that after the week's storms and drainage outflows. :-(

 

I also saw a secondary challenge by [http://www.flickr.com/photos/pessimisaurus/] for color! I know I've been a bit obsessed with monochrome, but with this early morning shooting into the sun setting, I couldn't help but keep the colors. (besides, after all the storms, there actually are colors beyond yellow & brown!) so, here we have green, and yellow, and gold, the green/blue of the river, and the roan of Augie's face.

 

I personally like the way the sun and pose have accentuated the lighter/white areas of Augie's coat, and the kind of golden rim light that come through her fringes. I also like the way she's looking forward toward me, keeping an eye on the people walking the path further behind.

 

Thanks for the challenges, Jessica & Margaret!

Not usually a massive fan of Jamie Oliver, but without any exaggeration, he genuinely has given the world a gift with this. Genius.

 

Recipe:

 

"A toasted cheese sandwich is a beautiful thing, but I'm not messing about here – this is the ultimate one and it's going to blow your mind. But there is a particular sequence of events that needs to happen in order to achieve the most ridiculously tasty, chomp-worthy sandwich. Follow this recipe, and it will always make you feel good. It is also especially useful when you're suffering from a light hangover. This is when the condiments – dolloped onto a side plate like a painter's palette – really come into their own.

 

With the No. 1 toasted cheese sarnie we don't score any points for buying expensive, artisan bread. It's important to go for something neutral, and in my eyes, only a white bloomer will do. Lightly butter the bread on both sides. To one piece of bread, add a nice grating of good-quality cheese that melts well, like Cheddar, Red Leicester or a mixture of the two. Place your second piece of bread on top, then cook in a sturdy non-stick frying pan on a medium heat for about 3 minutes on each side. This is important, because if it gets too coloured too quickly you won't get the gorgeous ooze and melt in the middle, and this is all about encouraging that internal cheese lava flow. As it cooks, I like to rest something flat with a little weight on top to ensure maximum surface area and crunch.

 

When lightly golden on both sides, lift the toastie out of the pan and grate a little layer of cheese into the pan where it was sitting. Place the toastie back on top and grate some more cheese on the top side. Leave it for just over 1 minute – wait for the cheese to bubble and the fat to spill out of it, then add a little pinch of cayenne pepper. Give the toastie a poke with a fish slice, and once it has a cheesy, doily-like crust on the bottom that moves as one, lift the toastie out of the pan and hold it on the fish slice for 30 seconds so the melted cheese hangs down, sets hard and forms an impressive cheese crown. Flip it onto the other side and once golden, serve, remembering to let it cool for a couple of minutes before attempting to tuck in".

 

Jamie Oliver's original recipe here.

Marcel Duchamp American (born France) Born 1887, died 1968

Étant donnés: 1 la chute d’eau, 2 le gaz d’éclairage… (Given: 1. The Waterfall, 2. The Illuminating Gas…) , 1946-66

Mixed media assemblage

Exterior: wooden door, iron nails, bricks, and stucco; interior: bricks, velvet, wood, parchment over an armature of lead, steel, brass, synthetic putties and adhesives, aluminum sheet, welded steel-wire screen, and wood; Peg-Board, hair, oil paint, plastic, steel binder clips, plastic clothes-pins, twigs, leaves, glass, plywood, brass piano hinge, nails, screws, cotton, collotype prints, acrylic varinish, chalk, graphite, paper, cardboard, tape, pen ink, electric light fixures, gas lamp (Bec Auer type), foam rubber, cork, electric motor, cookie tin, and linoleum

Gift of the Cassandra Foundation, 1969-41-1

From the Placard The Philadelphia Museum of Art

www.philamuseum.org/

www.philamuseum.org/exhibitions/324.html

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcel_Duchamp

www.understandingduchamp.com/

www.nytimes.com/2009/08/28/arts/design/28duchamp.html

youtu.be/VYqDpNmnu8I

Id 850

 

Dreams, Wishes, and Tears

by Sir Shotgun

If dreams were given to a lonely man

and a lonely man's dreams came true,

I'd force myself to sleep all the time

just so I could dream of you

 

If wishes were given to a lonely man

and I was given just two,

I'd wish for you to always love me

and the other I'd give to you

 

If my tears could write a love song

I'd write a love song for you,

It would explain just how I feel inside

and how much I love you too

 

But, dreams are only dreams

and wishes seldom come true,

My tears can't write a love song,

but when they fall, they fall for you

 

...given to me by my daughter years back.

the journey maker

St George, Stowlangtoft, Suffolk

 

Given that our parish churches almost without exception underwent restorations in the 19th Century, it should be obvious that when we enter a medieval church, we are encountering a Victorian vision of the medieval. Even when the actual furnishings and fittings are medieval, the whole piece is still a Victorian conception.

 

Inevitably, the question arises of what was there before the restoration and what wasn't. The obvious answer is that we must assume that nothing is as it first appears.

 

A prime example of a church that assumes a continuity that may not actually be the truth is here in the flat fields between Woolpit and Ixworth. This part of Suffolk can be rather bleak in winter, but in summer the churchyard here is verdant and golden, as beautiful a place as any in the county. The church is large, and yet unusually narrow. It sits on a mound that has been cut down on one side by the road. In the churchyard you'll find the well-known memorial to the art critic Peter Fuller and his unborn son, killed in a car crash in 1990.

 

In the churchyard wall there is what appears to be broken medieval window tracery, which is worth noticing, for hereby hangs a tale.

 

St George is one of the great Suffolk churches. Although it may externally appear a little severe, and is by no means as grand as Blythburgh, Long Melford and the rest, it is a treasure house of the medieval inside. Unusually for a church of its date, it was all rebuilt in one go, in the late 14th century, and the perpendicular windows are not yet full of the 'walls of glass' confidence that the subsequent century would see. The tracery appears to have been repaired, and possibly even renewed, which may explain the tracery in the churchyard wall. However, it doesn't take much to see that the tracery in the wall is not perpendicular at all, but decorated. So it may be that the broken tracery is from the original church that the late 14th century church replaced. But the wall itself isn't medieval, so where had it been all those years? Is it possible that the current window tracery is not medieval at all?

 

Stowlangtoft church featured in Simon Jenkins' book England's Thousand Best Churches, which sends plenty of visitors to its locked door, and may help stave off the inevitable for a while, for there is no real congregation here any more and the church is moribund. Regular services are held across the fields at Pakenham, and St George is now only used on special occasions. The key is kept across the road, where the very nice lady told me in February 2018 that the church is now headed for redundancy. It seems likely that care of it will be conveyed into the hands of the Churches Conservation Trust.

 

You step in through the chancel door (the lock here is very awkward, but do persevere) and if you are anything like me you will head straight down to the west end where you will find the font. Likethe window tracery, it asks some questions. Unusually, it features a Saint on seven of the panels, Christ being on the westwards face. Mortlock dates it to the early 14th century, and the Saints it shows are familiar cults from that time: St Margaret, St Catherine, St Peter and St Paul, and less commonly St George. The cult of St George was at its height in the early years of the 14th century. Mortlock describes the font as mutilated, and it certainly isn't looking its best. But I think there is more going on here than meets the eye. Fonts were plastered over in Elizabethan times, and only relief that stood proud of the plaster was mutilated. These are all shallow reliefs, and I do not think they have been mutilated at all. To my eye at least, this stonework appears weathered. I wonder if this font was removed from the church, probably in the mid-17th century, and served an outdoor purpose until it was returned in the 19th century.

 

The story of this church in the 19th century is well-documented. In 1832, as part of his grand tour of Suffolk, David Davy visited, and was pleased to find that the church was at last undergoing repair. The chancel had been roofless, and the nave used for services. A new Rectory was being built. Who was the catalyst behind all this? His name was Samuel Rickards, and he was Rector here for almost the middle forty years of the 19th century. Roy Tricker notes that he was a good friend of John Henry Newman, the future Cardinal, and they often corresponded on the subject of the pre-Reformation ordering of English churches. It is interesting to think how, at this seminal moment, Rickards might have informed the thought of the Oxford Movement. Sadly, when Newman became a Catholic, Rickards broke off all correspondence with him.

 

During the course of the 1840s and 1850s, Rickards transformed Stowlangtoft church. He got the great Ipswich woodcarver Henry Ringham in to restore, replicate and complete the marvellous set of bench ends - Ringham did the same thing at Woolpit, a few miles away. Ringham's work is so good that it is sometimes hard for the inexperienced eye to detect it. However, as at Woolpit, Ringham only copied animals here, and the weirder stuff is all medieval, and probably dates from the rebuilding of the church. The glory of Stowlangtoft's bench ends is partly the sheer quantity - there are perhaps 60 carvings - but also that there are several unique subjects.

 

The carvings appear to be part of the same group as Woolpit and Tostock - you will recognise the unicorn, the chained bear, the bull playing a harp, the bird with a man's head, from similar carvings elsewhere. And then hopefully that little alarm bell in your heard should start to go "Hmmmm....." because some of the carvings here are clearly not from the same group. It is hard to believe that the mermaid and the owl, for example, are from the same workshop, or even from the same decade. The benches themselves are no clue, as it was common practice in the 19th century to replace medieval bench ends on modern benches, or on medieval benches, or even on modern benches made out of medieval timber (as happened at Blythburgh). Could it be that Samuel Rickards found some of these bench ends elsewhere? Could he have been the kind of person to do a thing like that?

 

Well, yes he could. As Roy Tricker recalls, the medieval roof at the tractarian Thomas Mozley's church at Cholderton in Wiltshire is East Anglian. Rickards acquired it after finding it in storage in Ipswich docks. It presumably came from one of the Ipswich churches. In the ferment of the great 19th century restoration of our English churches, there was loads of medieval junk lying around, much of it going begging. But was Samuel Rickards the kind of person to counterfeit his church's medieval inheritance?

 

Well, yes he probably was. The faux-medieval roundels in the windows of the nave are clearly not medieval at all, but were in fact the work of the young Lucy Rickards, daughter of Samuel Rickards himself. Some are clearly to the young girl's design, and Pevsner notes that others are copied from medieval manuscript illustrations in the British Museum, although the Holy Kinship and Presentation in the Temple roundels at least are very close copies of the Flemish roundels of the same subjects in Nowton church on the other side of Bury St Edmunds.

 

Truly medieval is the vast St Christopher wall-painting still discernible on the north wall. It was probably one of the last to be painted. The bench ends are medieval, of course, as is the fine rood-screen dado, albeit repainted. There is even some medieval figure glass in the upper tracery of some of the windows, including St Agnes holding a lamb and four Old Testament prophets. The laughable stone pulpit is Rickard's commission, and the work of William White. What can Rickards have been thinking of? But we step through into the chancel, and suddenly the whole thing moves up a gear. For here are some things that are truly remarkable.

 

In a county famous for its woodwork, the furnishings of Stowlangtoft's chancel are breathtaking, even awe-inspiring. Behind the rood screen dado is Suffolk's most complete set of return stalls. Most striking are the figures that form finials to the stall ends. They are participants in the Mass, including two Priests, two servers and two acolytes. The figure of the Priest at a prayer desk must be one of the best medieval images in Suffolk, and Mortlock thought the stalls the finest in England.

 

The benches that face eastwards are misericords, and beneath them are wonderful things: angels, lions and wodewoses, evangelistic symbols and crowned heads. A hawk captures a hare, a dragon sticks out its tongue. Between the seats are weird oriental faces.

 

Now, you know what I am going to ask next. How much of this is from this church originally? It all appears medieval work, and there is no reason to believe it might not have been moved elsewhere in the church when the chancel was open to the elements. What evidence have we got?

 

Firstly, we should notice that the only other Suffolk church with such a large number of medieval misericords of this quality is just a mile away, at Norton. I don't ask you to see this as significant, merely to notice it in passing. Secondly, I am no carpenter, but it does look to me as though two sets of furnishings have been cobbled together; the stalls that back on to the screen appear to have been integrated into the larger structure of stalls and desks that front them and the north and south walls.

 

However, if you look closely at the figures of the two Deacons, you will see that they are bearing shields of the Ashfield and Peche families. The Ashfield arms also appear on the rood screen, and the Ashfields were the major donors when the church was rebuilt in the 14th century. So on balance I am inclined to think that the greater part of the stall structure was in this church originally from when it was rebuilt. And the misericords? Well, I don't know. But I think they have to be considered as part of the same set as those at Norton. In which case they may have come from the same church, which may have been this one, but may not have been. Almost certainly, the stalls at Norton did not come from Norton church, and folklore has it that they were originally in the quire of Bury Abbey.

 

Other remarkable things in St George include FE Howard's beautiful war memorial in the former north doorway, and in the opposite corner of the nave Hugh Easton's unexpectedly gorgeous St George, which serves the same purpose. He's not an artist I usually admire, but it is as good as his work at Elveden. Back up in the chancel is a delightful painted pipe organ which was apparently exhibited at, and acquired from, the Great Exhibition of 1851.

 

But St George at Stowlangtoft is, of course, most famous for the Flemish carvings that flank the rather heavy altarpiece. They were given to the church by Henry Wilson of Stowlangtoft Hall, who allegedly found them in an Ixworth junk shop. They show images from the crucifixion story, but are not Stations of the Cross as some guides suggest. They date from the 1480s, and were almost certainly the altarpiece of a French or Flemish monastery that was sacked during the French Revolution. The carvings were once brightly painted, and piled up in a block rather than spread out in a line. The niches, and crowning arches above them, are 19th century.

 

One cold winter's night in January 1977, a gang of thieves broke into this locked church and stole them. Nothing more was seen or heard of them until 1982, when they were discovered on display in an Amsterdam art gallery. Their journey had been a convoluted one. Taken to Holland, they were used as security for a loan which was defaulted upon. The new owner was then burgled, and the carvings were fenced to an Amsterdam junk dealer. They were bought from his shop, and taken to the museum, which immediately identified them as 15th century carvings. They put them on display, and a Dutch woman who had read about the Stowlangtoft theft recognised them.

 

The parish instituted legal proceedings to get them back. An injunction was taken out to stop the new owner removing them from the museum. The parish lost the case, leaving them with a monstrous legal bill, but the story has a happy ending. A Dutch businessman negotiated their purchase from the owner, paid off the legal bills, and returned the carvings to Stowlangtoft. Apparently this was all at vast cost, but the businessman gave the gift in thanks for Britain's liberation of Holland from the Nazis. No, thank you, sir.

 

Today, the carvings are fixed firmly in place and alarmed, so they won't be going walkabout again. But a little part of me wonders if they really should be here at all. Sure, they are medieval, but they weren't here originally, and they weren't even in England originally. Wouldn't it be better if they were displayed somewhere safer, where people could pay to see them, and provide some income for the maintenance of the church building? And then, whisper it, when St George is taken on by the CCT they might even be able to leave it open.

 

Given that we'd already done a 'Bristol' ambigram design before Christmas I thought it only fair to get Brixton in on the action. Knowing my current proclivities if I did a load of them they'd all have stripes on them so I limited myself to just two versions for now. One with stripes, obviously, and one with a wavy patterned design. In all fairness I'd probably have to respray the blue and grey one if anyone wanted it as my favourite part, the Ace of Aces logo bit, hasn't really come out very well but I thought I'd wait and see if there was any interest first. They're A2 in size and I'd also be happy to re-do with any particular background colourways as requested if anyone felt so inclined as to ask. So there you have it.

 

As a side note if you're not familiar with Ram John Holder's song 'Brixton Blues' then I suggest you get yourself to Youtube pretty sharpish and give your ears a little treat.

 

Cheers

 

id-iom

Given that it’s freezing cold up here in Minneapolis right now so this pic of a gun frozen inside of a block of ice feels very appropriate to me. The first in a limited series of frozen items. If it weren’t for lack of space in my freezer I’d freeze a lot more objects and photograph them.

 

tumblr / site / twitter

Circuit de Monaco is the name given to a motor racing circuit laid out on the city streets of Monte Carlo and La Condamine around the harbour of the principality of Monaco. It is commonly referred to as "Monte Carlo" because it is largely inside the Monte Carlo neighbourhood of Monaco.

 

The circuit is used on one weekend in the month of May of each year to host the Formula One Monaco Grand Prix. Formula One's respective feeder series over the years — F2, F3000 and today GP2 — also visit the circuit concurrently with Formula One.

 

The idea for a Formula One race around the streets of Monaco came from Anthony Noghes, the president of the Monegasque car club and close friend of the ruling Grimaldi family. The inaugural race was held in 1929 and was won by William Grover-Williams in a Bugatti.

 

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circuit_de_Monaco

Given to me by Fred Sawley (ex. Tooting B.C.)

Fred's recollection is that he bought it in about 1954 and used it to do a 1-05 for 25m.

 

There is no discernable frame number on the B/B, however, the number on the steerer (#4908) points to a 1955 frame The lugs pre-date Carpenter's adoption of Nervex lugs for this model so that tallies.

 

Renovation.

Decal on seat tube states "Renovated by Cyril Wren". When? The wheelset is Shimano/Weinmann Alesa, brake is Weinmann, both consistent with a 1970's-80's renovation. The GB bars are most likely later than '55. The seat tube transfer is also from the last period of Carpenter manufacture (H Lloyd Cycles then bought the remaining stock of these). This suggests a mid-70's date for this work. Carpenter bikes were no longer in production by the early '70's which would explain why Cyril Wren (just up the road) did the renovation.

There was a Tony Hunt who raced successfully for Clarence Wheelers (1970 Poole Whs. 25, 1:00:36; 1973 Rufus Whs. 30, 1:12:45). Was this his bike? This was well after the era of fixed wheel TT bikes.

 

The bar stem and chainset are a mystery to me.

Fazıl Küçük (Turkish pronunciation: [faˈzɯl cyˈtʃyc]; Greek: Φαζίλ Κιουτσούκ; 14 March 1906 – 15 January 1984) was a Turkish Cypriot politician and a medical doctor who served as the first Vice President of the Republic of Cyprus.

 

Fazıl Küçük, the son of a farmer, was born in Nicosia in 1906. After graduating from the Turkish High School in Nicosia, Küçük went on to study medicine at the Universities of Istanbul, Lausanne and Paris. Having returned to Cyprus in 1937, he started a practice, but his interest in politics soon led to him to become a voice for Turkish Cypriot rights. In 1941 Küçük founded the newspaper Halkın Sesi (The Voice of the People) and became the managing editor. Due to his campaign against the British colonial administration, his paper was not given a permit for publication until 1942, the paper is still being published to this day.

 

In 1943, he became one of the founders of the Kıbrıs Adası Türk Azınlığı Kurumu (Association of the Turkish Minority of the Island of Cyprus – known as KATAK). The aim of the party was to promote the social, economic and political well-being of the Turkish Cypriot people. Due to disagreements with some of its members, Küçük parted with KATAK and established the Kıbrıs Millî Türk Halk Partisi (Cyprus National Turkish People's Party – known as KMTHP). Following a 15-year struggle, Küçük helped for the transfer of the Evkaf (a Turkish religious fund) from British to Turkish Cypriot control.

 

During the 1959 London and Zurich Conferences for the creation of an independent Republic of Cyprus, Küçük represented the Turkish Cypriot community and was able to secure constitutional safeguards for the people. On December 3, 1959 Küçük was elected vice president of the new republic. Following Greek Cypriot proposals to modify the constitution (see Cyprus dispute), Küçük continued as the vice president of the Republic of Cyprus until 1973 when he was succeeded by Rauf Denktaş. Despite ill health, Küçük continued to support Turkish Cypriots through his Halkın Sesi newspaper.

 

Küçük died in a Westminster hospital on January 15, 1984, less than a year after the Unilateral declaration of Independence of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus. He was the uncle of former Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus prime minister, İrsen Küçük.

 

Nicosia ( Greek : Λευκωσία (Lefkosia), English : Nicosia), located in the middle of the island of Cyprus , is the capital of the Republic of Cyprus and the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus . It is the most populous city of Cyprus and the most important cultural, industrial, trade and transportation center. Nicosia is located at 35°10' north, 33°21' east.

 

The city is divided into two by the border called the Green Line . Although de jure the Republic of Cyprus has the administration of the entire city, de facto it only has control over South Nicosia . Northern Nicosia is under the rule of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus and is considered to be under Turkish occupation by the international community. The two sectors are separated by a Buffer Zone administered by United Nations Peacekeeping Forces . With the 1960 Constitution of the Republic of Cyprus, the Turkish Municipality of Nicosia was granted legal status.

 

Nicosia is known as "Lefkosia" (Λευκωσία) in Greek and "Nicosia" in English .

 

The first name of the area where the city is located was "Ledra". This name is also written as "Ledrae", "Lidir", "Ledras", "Ledron" and "Letra". Later, this city was destroyed and when it was rebuilt by Leucus, the city was named "Lefkotheon" (Λευκόθεον - city of the white gods). This name was also occasionally referred to as "Ledron". Later, the words "Kermia" and "Leucus" (Λευκούς) were used for the city. In the 7th century, Hierocles, a Byzantine geographer, mentioned the city as Lefkousia (Λευκουσία) in his book Synekdemos (Vademecum) . In the 13th century , the Patriarch of Constantinople referred to Nicosia as Kalli Nikesis (Καλλι Νίκησις - Beautiful Victory). A writer and monk, St. Neophytos referred to Nicosia as "Leucopolis" (Lefkopolis - White City) in a sermon he gave around 1176. Since the 10th century, the name "Nicosia" has become generally accepted. In the 18th century, Greek Cypriot historian Archimandrite Kyprianos stated that another name for Nicosia was "Photolampos" (Shining with Light).

 

There are various claims that the city is referred to as "Nicosia" and similar forms in European languages. According to one claim, the Latins replaced the first syllable of the word, "Lef", with "Ni" because they could not pronounce it. Another claim is that the name derives from the name "Kallinikesis". A writer from Sicily named Sindaco connects the name "Nicosia" to the town named "Nicosia" in Sicily and claimed that King Tancred from this town was with Richard I during the siege of Cyprus and named the city after his own town. . Another claim is that the name "Nicosia" emerged during the rebellion of the city's people against the Knights Templar in 1192. A German priest named Ludolf named the city "Nycosia" between 1341 and 1363. HAS Dearborn, in his book published in 1819, says that another name for Nicosia is "Nicotia". In 1856, William Curry stated that the Greeks called the city "Escosie" and the Western Europeans called it "Licosia".

 

The name of the city is mentioned in Ottoman documents as "Nicosia" or "medine-i Nicosia" . In addition, in a letter regarding the conquest of Nicosia in 1570, the name of the city is mentioned as "Nicosia". Kâtip Çelebi refers to the city as "Nicosia" (which is sometimes used today).

 

The first settlement in the area where Nicosia is located took place in the Neolithic Age . The date of the first settlement is approximately 3000-4000 BC. In 1050 BC or in the 7th century BC, a city called " Ledra " was founded in the region. This city had an important place among the other city kingdoms on the island. During archaeological excavations, a Greek inscription written in the 4th century BC was found indicating the existence of a temple dedicated to Aphrodite in Ledra. By around 330 BC it had shrunk to a small village. When this city was destroyed due to earthquakes , in 200 BC, Leucus, the son of Ptolemy I Soter , founded the city that is today Nicosia.

 

The city's importance began to increase in the late Byzantine period. In the 7th century, it became the capital of the island during the Arab raids.

 

It fell into the hands of Richard I in 1191 . It was the capital of the island during the period when the Knights Templar purchased and dominated the island. A rebellion broke out in the city on 11 April 1192. The knights suppressed this uprising with a massacre and then left the island.

 

The Lusignans purchased the island and Nicosia remained their capital. During the Lusignan period, he built many new buildings in the city. During the Venetian period, most of these were demolished and used in the construction of walls. During this period, the Lusignans also built walls around the city. These walls were in the shape of an irregular pentagon . There were no walls in the city before. King Henry I built the first walls with two towers in 1211, Peter I built a third tower, and Henry II built the first walls. Henry had the city completely surrounded by walls. The city became quite wealthy during this period. Nicosia was one of four dioceses on the island. It also became the center of an archdiocese in 1212. During this period, events were taking place between Greeks and Latins, and bloody conflicts broke out in the city in 1313 and 1360.

 

Nicosia has been damaged by many earthquakes throughout its history. The 1222 Cyprus earthquake was felt strongly in the city and caused great damage. In November 1330, a flood occurred in the city and three thousand people lost their lives. In addition, the city was heavily damaged by the Genoese in 1373 and the Mamluks in 1426.

 

On February 26, 1489, Nicosia, along with the entire island, came under the rule of the Republic of Venice . Just before the Ottoman conquest of the island, the Venetians inspected the walls and found them too weak. According to the new plans, the walls of Nicosia were reduced from eight miles to three miles. Meanwhile, all buildings outside the new walls were destroyed. According to a claim, the route of Kanlıdere was changed by the Venetians. Another claim is that the Ottomans changed the route of the stream to save the city from floods.

 

During the conquest of Cyprus by the Ottomans , Nicosia was the third largest settlement taken. Piyale Pasha and his army took action to take Nicosia on 22 July 1570. On July 25, Nicosia was besieged. Clashes began on July 27, as the Venetians did not accept the Ottomans' demands to surrender the castle. The fact that the walls were very strong ensured that Nicosia would not fall. At dawn on 9 September 1570, a new attack was launched and troops of more than 20 thousand people conquered Nicosia.

 

As part of the settlement of Turks in Cyprus during the Ottoman period, the settlement of the Turkish population in Nicosia, as well as in the entire island, started in 1572. Non-professional Greeks in the city were settled in the neighborhoods outside the city and replaced by Turks. According to a census made during this period, the city had 31 neighborhoods. In two of them ("Ermiyan" and "Karaman"), the Armenian population was in the majority.

 

During the Ottoman period, Nicosia first served as the capital of the State of Cyprus as the center of a district called "Mountain Kaza", and later became a sanjak . During the Ottoman period, St. Large churches such as the Sophia Cathedral were converted into mosques. ​​Nicosia - Larnaca road was built. The gates of the city were opened at sunrise and closed at sunset. The Governor, Judge, Interpreter and Greek Archbishop resided in Nicosia. ​​William Kimbrough Pendleton states that in 1864 most of the houses in the city were made of clay brick. As a result of a major earthquake in 1741, one minaret of the Selimiye Mosque collapsed and had to be rebuilt. There were riots in the city in 1764 and 1821.

 

On July 12, 1878, Nicosia, along with the rest of the island, came under British rule . British troops entered the city through the Kyrenia Gate and hoisted the first British flag on the Değirmen Bastion next to the Paphos Gate . Nicosia Municipality was established in 1882. Under British rule, Nicosia grew outside the city walls. Between 1930 and 1945, villages such as Ortaköy , Strovolos , Büyük Kaymaklı , Küçük Kaymaklı began to merge with the city, and the first settlements were made in regions such as Yenişehir . On January 1, 1944, Ayii Omoloyitadhes was included in the municipal boundaries. In order to provide access outside the city, the walls on the sides of the Paphos Gate in 1879, the Kyrenia Gate in 1931, and the Famagusta Gate in 1945 were cut. In 1905, a train station was built in Büyük Kaymaklı and train services to Nicosia started, this practice ended in 1955. In 1912, the first electricity came to the city. Also in the same year, kerosene-powered street lamps were replaced with electric ones. Under British rule, the sewer network was cleaned and the roads were repaired. On October 17, 1947, as a result of an explosion in the power plant that supplied energy to the city, the city was left without electricity for 116 days.

 

In 1895, Greeks attacked the Turks in the Tahtakale region of Nicosia. In 1931, Greeks rebelled against British rule and burned the government building. Founded in 1955, EOKA attacked public buildings and the radio station in the city against British rule.

 

The Republic of Cyprus was established on 16 August 1960 . The flag of the Republic of Cyprus was hoisted in the House of Representatives at midnight that night, ending British rule on the island. In accordance with Article 173 of the 1960 constitution, a Greek (Nicosia -Greek Municipality) and a Turkish ( Nicosia Turkish Municipality ) municipality were established on the island. On the night of 20–21 December 1963, the events known as " Bloody Christmas " began. Zeki Halil and Cemaliye Emirali were killed as a result of fire opened on cars in Tahtakale district of Nicosia. Between 23-30, Küçük Kaymaklı was besieged. On the night of 23-24 January, 11 people were killed in the Kumsal region, and the family of Turkish major Nihat İlhan was killed in the incident known as the Kumsal Raid. An attack was carried out against the Turks in the Kanlıdere region. As a result of the events, the governments of Turkey , Greece and the United Kingdom met on 30 December 1963 . As a result of this meeting, the border , also known as the Green Line, was drawn, dividing the city into Turkish and Greek parts. The reason why this border is called the "Green Line" is that the pen of the United Nations official who drew the line on the map was green. The borders of the city were finalized with the Cyprus Operation carried out in 1974 by the order of Turkish Prime Minister Bülent Ecevit .

 

On 29 March 1968, the suburbs of Eylence , Büyük Kaymaklı, Küçük Kaymaklı, Pallouriotissa , Strovolos (partially) and Kızılay were also included in the municipal borders. Following the de facto division of the city, the area under the administration of the Republic of Cyprus continued to grow in a southerly direction. North Nicosia also continued to grow and merged with outlying villages such as Gönyeli (which has a separate municipality) and Hamitköy (which is part of the Nicosia Turkish Municipality).

 

Kermiya Border Gate was opened in 2003, and Lokmacı Gate was opened in 2008 .

 

Nicosia is located in a central point of the island of Cyprus, in the central parts of the Mesarya Plain .

 

Nicosia has a hot semi-arid climate according to the Köppen climate classification . The hottest months are July and August, and the coldest months are January and February. The month with the most rainfall is January. Nicosia is one of the warmest places on the island.

 

Nicosia is located in the center of the geological formation called Nicosia Formation. This region dates back to the Lower Pliocene period. Gray, yellow and white marl layers, sandy and yellow limestones and sparse conglomerate bands are frequently encountered. The reconnection of the Mediterranean with the Atlantic Ocean resulted in the rise of sea water and the formation of new sediments, which formed the Nicosia Formation. Underneath Nicosia is the Nicosia- Serdarlı aquifer , which has an area of ​​60 km² .

 

The riverside parts of Nicosia city, especially Kanlıdere , have a great biodiversity. [88] In a research conducted in the streams in a 12.5 km diameter area of ​​the city, which is rich in vegetation (especially in stream beds), 185 different plant species belonging to 62 different families were identified. Among these, there are four endemic and 16 rare species. The most common tree species found on the banks of streams in the city is the eucalyptus tree (various types can be found). There is a total of 0.262 square kilometers of forest area in the Nicosia Central agricultural region of Northern Cyprus . Two kilometers outside Nicosia (in its southern part), within the boundaries of the Municipality of Eylence, is the Pedagogical Academy National Forest Park, and to the south of the city is the Athalassa National Forest Park. In Northern Nicosia, there is the Nicosia Forest Nursery, which is 0.5 hectares in size.

 

The habitats of animals in the stream beds in some parts of the city are in danger. The reeds along the streams host many animals, especially bird species. Many creatures such as kingfishers , water chickens , striped turtles and chameleons live on the banks of the streams . There are especially many turtles in the streams.

 

Nicosia is the commercial center of Cyprus. The city hosts the central banks of the Republic of Cyprus and the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus .

 

The city of Nicosia is divided into two parts in terms of urbanization, these are old Nicosia (the area inside the walls) and new Nicosia (outside the walls). In Old Nicosia, the roads are narrow and there are dead ends. In New Nicosia, there is more vertical and horizontal development over a wider area. Junctions and roads are wider, parks occupy larger areas.

 

In Nicosia during the Ottoman period, Greeks and Turks lived mixed in some neighborhoods, and in some neighborhoods, one of them was the majority. Mosques can be found in Turkish neighborhoods and churches in Greek neighborhoods. Armenians also lived in the city. The houses of the Armenians who used to live in Köşklüçiftlik were all made of cut stone and had their own unique architecture. Bay windows are a common feature in houses in Old Nicosia . The Büyük Han is one of the most advanced architectural works on the island, and today it is a cultural center where various activities such as exhibitions, sales of antiques and traditional items, and shadow plays take place.

 

There are fourteen museums in the part of Nicosia south of the Green Line. The Cyprus Museum was founded in 1888 and exhibits hundreds of archaeological artifacts brought from all over the island. The house of Hadjigeorgakis Kornesios, who worked as a translator for the Divan during the Ottoman period, built in 1793, is used as an ethnography museum. In the northern part of the city, the number of museums is six. Derviş Pasha Mansion is used as an ethnography museum.

 

Although there are many theaters in the south of the city, the headquarters of the Cyprus Theater Association is in Nicosia. The State Theater Building, built in the 2000s, formerly hosted this institution, which suffered from inadequate facilities, and is not allowed to be used by any other theater organization. Nicosia Municipality Theatre, built in 1967, has a capacity of 1220 people. In the north, the Turkish Cypriot State Theater performs plays and organizes tours; but it does not have a hall. Also in the north is the Nicosia Municipal Theater, which was established in 1980. The Cyprus Theater Festival, jointly organized by the Nicosia Turkish Municipality and Nicosia Municipal Theatres, is a large organization attended by institutions such as Istanbul City Theatres , and all of these can be held in only two halls.

 

There are nineteen cinemas in the southern part of the city, six of which are owned by a company called K Cineplex, and thirteen are owned by other companies. In the north of the city, the number of cinemas is four.

 

Two waterways built during the Ottoman period were used in Nicosia until the mid-20th century. These waterways were Arab Ahmed and Silihtar waterways. Apart from this, water extracted from wells was also used.

 

Telegraph was first used in the city in 1873. In 1936, a public telephone network was established covering the entire island and Nicosia.

 

The migration to the city of Nicosia as a result of the Cyprus Operation in 1974 caused problems such as development, transportation, sewerage, housing shortage and lack of infrastructure in the city.

 

Since Nicosia is a divided city, the Republic of Cyprus and Northern Cyprus education systems are implemented in the city. A university called Near East University in North Nicosia , Cyprus International University, Mediterranean Karpaz University, Anadolu University 's open education faculty, apart from these, colleges such as Atatürk Teachers Academy and Police School There are. In the area under the control of the Republic of Cyprus , there are universities named University of Cyprus , Open University of Cyprus , Frederick University , University of Nicosia , [132] and European University of Cyprus.

 

In the Nicosia District of the Republic of Cyprus, there are 42 secondary schools, 133 primary schools and three kindergartens. There are a total of 30 primary schools, kindergartens and special education centers at the primary level in the Nicosia district of Northern Cyprus .

 

The roads on the island were built to be centered in Nicosia and unite in Nicosia. All important roads meet in Nicosia. During the Ottoman period, only the Larnaca road was built, and the previously built roads were in ruins. Under British rule, these roads were rebuilt and a regular postal service was established between Nicosia and other cities. The first car arrived in the city in 1907. The first bus services from the city started in 1929, these services departed from the Kyrenia Gate and went to Strovolos, Aydemet and Büyük Kaymaklı. [139] Train services started between Nicosia and Famagusta on 21 October 1905 . Train services were organized from Nicosia to approximately 30 stops. Train services ended on December 31, 1951. Nicosia International Airport was opened in 1949 . This airport is in the Buffer Zone today and is not used.

 

Today, there is a bus service in the Republic of Cyprus controlled part of the city run by a company called Nicosia Bus Company . All buses leave from the terminal in Solomos Square and make stops every 20 to 30 minutes. There are plans to expand the bus line, increase the frequency of services and renew the bus fleet. The Department of Public Works signed an agreement to establish tram and light rail lines between Nicosia - Larnaca and Limassol . There are motorways such as A1 and A2 from the city . In addition to developing this road network, there are also projects to improve the roads within the city. Apart from this, there are also taxis . Air transportation to the city is provided by Larnaca International Airport (44 km away) and Paphos International Airport . Larnaca Airport is used more than Paphos Airport.

 

LETTAŞ company also has buses in North Nicosia. The first municipal bus was put into operation on the Göçmenköy-Yenişehir route on January 15, 1980, during Mustafa Akıncı 's term as mayor. Starting from 1984, this service was transformed into a public transportation network within the municipality and started to provide service, and later the same vehicles were privatized to be operated by the LETTAŞ company. There is a bus terminal in the Yenişehir area. The airport used by the northern part of the city is Ercan Airport . Transportation to the airport is provided by buses. It is also possible to reach the city by taxi and minibus .

 

Nicosia Municipality is a sister city with the following cities:

Germany Schwerin , Germany (1974)

Greece Athens , Greece (1988)

Ukraine Odessa , Ukraine (1996)

Iranian Shiraz , Iran (1999)

Romania Bucharest , Romania (2004)

Chinese Shanghai , China (2004)

 

The city has also collaborated with the following cities:

Russia Moscow , Russia (1997, 2002, 2003-2004, 2006-2008)

Italy Nicosia , Italy (2000-2002)

Chinese Qingdao , China (2001)

Greece Athens , Greece (2001, 2003)

Finland Helsinki , Finland (2003)

Syria Damascus , Syria (2003)

Croatia Zagreb , Croatia (2004)

Malta Valletta , Malta (2007)

 

Sister cities of Nicosia Turkish Municipality

Türkiye Izmir , Turkey (2019)

Türkiye Ankara , Turkey (1988)

Türkiye Bursa , Turkey

North Macedonia Kumanovo , North Macedonia (2007)

Gagauzia Comrat , Gagauzia

Türkiye Gaziantep Turkey​

Türkiye Istanbul Turkey

 

Northern Cyprus, officially the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC), is a de facto state that comprises the northeastern portion of the island of Cyprus. It is recognised only by Turkey, and its territory is considered by all other states to be part of the Republic of Cyprus.

 

Northern Cyprus extends from the tip of the Karpass Peninsula in the northeast to Morphou Bay, Cape Kormakitis and its westernmost point, the Kokkina exclave in the west. Its southernmost point is the village of Louroujina. A buffer zone under the control of the United Nations stretches between Northern Cyprus and the rest of the island and divides Nicosia, the island's largest city and capital of both sides.

 

A coup d'état in 1974, performed as part of an attempt to annex the island to Greece, prompted the Turkish invasion of Cyprus. This resulted in the eviction of much of the north's Greek Cypriot population, the flight of Turkish Cypriots from the south, and the partitioning of the island, leading to a unilateral declaration of independence by the north in 1983. Due to its lack of recognition, Northern Cyprus is heavily dependent on Turkey for economic, political and military support.

 

Attempts to reach a solution to the Cyprus dispute have been unsuccessful. The Turkish Army maintains a large force in Northern Cyprus with the support and approval of the TRNC government, while the Republic of Cyprus, the European Union as a whole, and the international community regard it as an occupation force. This military presence has been denounced in several United Nations Security Council resolutions.

 

Northern Cyprus is a semi-presidential, democratic republic with a cultural heritage incorporating various influences and an economy that is dominated by the services sector. The economy has seen growth through the 2000s and 2010s, with the GNP per capita more than tripling in the 2000s, but is held back by an international embargo due to the official closure of the ports in Northern Cyprus by the Republic of Cyprus. The official language is Turkish, with a distinct local dialect being spoken. The vast majority of the population consists of Sunni Muslims, while religious attitudes are mostly moderate and secular. Northern Cyprus is an observer state of ECO and OIC under the name "Turkish Cypriot State", PACE under the name "Turkish Cypriot Community", and Organization of Turkic States with its own name.

 

Several distinct periods of Cypriot intercommunal violence involving the two main ethnic communities, Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots, marked mid-20th century Cyprus. These included the Cyprus Emergency of 1955–59 during British rule, the post-independence Cyprus crisis of 1963–64, and the Cyprus crisis of 1967. Hostilities culminated in the 1974 de facto division of the island along the Green Line following the Turkish invasion of Cyprus. The region has been relatively peaceful since then, but the Cyprus dispute has continued, with various attempts to solve it diplomatically having been generally unsuccessful.

 

Cyprus, an island lying in the eastern Mediterranean, hosted a population of Greeks and Turks (four-fifths and one-fifth, respectively), who lived under British rule in the late nineteenth-century and the first half of the twentieth-century. Christian Orthodox Church of Cyprus played a prominent political role among the Greek Cypriot community, a privilege that it acquired during the Ottoman Empire with the employment of the millet system, which gave the archbishop an unofficial ethnarch status.

 

The repeated rejections by the British of Greek Cypriot demands for enosis, union with Greece, led to armed resistance, organised by the National Organization of Cypriot Struggle, or EOKA. EOKA, led by the Greek-Cypriot commander George Grivas, systematically targeted British colonial authorities. One of the effects of EOKA's campaign was to alter the Turkish position from demanding full reincorporation into Turkey to a demand for taksim (partition). EOKA's mission and activities caused a "Cretan syndrome" (see Turkish Resistance Organisation) within the Turkish Cypriot community, as its members feared that they would be forced to leave the island in such a case as had been the case with Cretan Turks. As such, they preferred the continuation of British colonial rule and then taksim, the division of the island. Due to the Turkish Cypriots' support for the British, EOKA's leader, Georgios Grivas, declared them to be enemies. The fact that the Turks were a minority was, according to Nihat Erim, to be addressed by the transfer of thousands of Turks from mainland Turkey so that Greek Cypriots would cease to be the majority. When Erim visited Cyprus as the Turkish representative, he was advised by Field Marshal Sir John Harding, the then Governor of Cyprus, that Turkey should send educated Turks to settle in Cyprus.

 

Turkey actively promoted the idea that on the island of Cyprus two distinctive communities existed, and sidestepped its former claim that "the people of Cyprus were all Turkish subjects". In doing so, Turkey's aim to have self-determination of two to-be equal communities in effect led to de jure partition of the island.[citation needed] This could be justified to the international community against the will of the majority Greek population of the island. Dr. Fazil Küçük in 1954 had already proposed Cyprus be divided in two at the 35° parallel.

 

Lindley Dan, from Notre Dame University, spotted the roots of intercommunal violence to different visions among the two communities of Cyprus (enosis for Greek Cypriots, taksim for Turkish Cypriots). Also, Lindlay wrote that "the merging of church, schools/education, and politics in divisive and nationalistic ways" had played a crucial role in creation of havoc in Cyprus' history. Attalides Michael also pointed to the opposing nationalisms as the cause of the Cyprus problem.

 

By the mid-1950's, the "Cyprus is Turkish" party, movement, and slogan gained force in both Cyprus and Turkey. In a 1954 editorial, Turkish Cypriot leader Dr. Fazil Kuchuk expressed the sentiment that the Turkish youth had grown up with the idea that "as soon as Great Britain leaves the island, it will be taken over by the Turks", and that "Turkey cannot tolerate otherwise". This perspective contributed to the willingness of Turkish Cypriots to align themselves with the British, who started recruiting Turkish Cypriots into the police force that patrolled Cyprus to fight EOKA, a Greek Cypriot nationalist organisation that sought to rid the island of British rule.

 

EOKA targeted colonial authorities, including police, but Georgios Grivas, the leader of EOKA, did not initially wish to open up a new front by fighting Turkish Cypriots and reassured them that EOKA would not harm their people. In 1956, some Turkish Cypriot policemen were killed by EOKA members and this provoked some intercommunal violence in the spring and summer, but these attacks on policemen were not motivated by the fact that they were Turkish Cypriots.

 

However, in January 1957, Grivas changed his policy as his forces in the mountains became increasingly pressured by the British Crown forces. In order to divert the attention of the Crown forces, EOKA members started to target Turkish Cypriot policemen intentionally in the towns, so that Turkish Cypriots would riot against the Greek Cypriots and the security forces would have to be diverted to the towns to restore order. The killing of a Turkish Cypriot policeman on 19 January, when a power station was bombed, and the injury of three others, provoked three days of intercommunal violence in Nicosia. The two communities targeted each other in reprisals, at least one Greek Cypriot was killed and the British Army was deployed in the streets. Greek Cypriot stores were burned and their neighbourhoods attacked. Following the events, the Greek Cypriot leadership spread the propaganda that the riots had merely been an act of Turkish Cypriot aggression. Such events created chaos and drove the communities apart both in Cyprus and in Turkey.

 

On 22 October 1957 Sir Hugh Mackintosh Foot replaced Sir John Harding as the British Governor of Cyprus. Foot suggested five to seven years of self-government before any final decision. His plan rejected both enosis and taksim. The Turkish Cypriot response to this plan was a series of anti-British demonstrations in Nicosia on 27 and 28 January 1958 rejecting the proposed plan because the plan did not include partition. The British then withdrew the plan.

 

In 1957, Black Gang, a Turkish Cypriot pro-taksim paramilitary organisation, was formed to patrol a Turkish Cypriot enclave, the Tahtakale district of Nicosia, against activities of EOKA. The organisation later attempted to grow into a national scale, but failed to gain public support.

 

By 1958, signs of dissatisfaction with the British increased on both sides, with a group of Turkish Cypriots forming Volkan (later renamed to the Turkish Resistance Organisation) paramilitary group to promote partition and the annexation of Cyprus to Turkey as dictated by the Menderes plan. Volkan initially consisted of roughly 100 members, with the stated aim of raising awareness in Turkey of the Cyprus issue and courting military training and support for Turkish Cypriot fighters from the Turkish government.

 

In June 1958, the British Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan, was expected to propose a plan to resolve the Cyprus issue. In light of the new development, the Turks rioted in Nicosia to promote the idea that Greek and Turkish Cypriots could not live together and therefore any plan that did not include partition would not be viable. This violence was soon followed by bombing, Greek Cypriot deaths and looting of Greek Cypriot-owned shops and houses. Greek and Turkish Cypriots started to flee mixed population villages where they were a minority in search of safety. This was effectively the beginning of the segregation of the two communities. On 7 June 1958, a bomb exploded at the entrance of the Turkish Embassy in Cyprus. Following the bombing, Turkish Cypriots looted Greek Cypriot properties. On 26 June 1984, the Turkish Cypriot leader, Rauf Denktaş, admitted on British channel ITV that the bomb was placed by the Turks themselves in order to create tension. On 9 January 1995, Rauf Denktaş repeated his claim to the famous Turkish newspaper Milliyet in Turkey.

 

The crisis reached a climax on 12 June 1958, when eight Greeks, out of an armed group of thirty five arrested by soldiers of the Royal Horse Guards on suspicion of preparing an attack on the Turkish quarter of Skylloura, were killed in a suspected attack by Turkish Cypriot locals, near the village of Geunyeli, having been ordered to walk back to their village of Kondemenos.

 

After the EOKA campaign had begun, the British government successfully began to turn the Cyprus issue from a British colonial problem into a Greek-Turkish issue. British diplomacy exerted backstage influence on the Adnan Menderes government, with the aim of making Turkey active in Cyprus. For the British, the attempt had a twofold objective. The EOKA campaign would be silenced as quickly as possible, and Turkish Cypriots would not side with Greek Cypriots against the British colonial claims over the island, which would thus remain under the British. The Turkish Cypriot leadership visited Menderes to discuss the Cyprus issue. When asked how the Turkish Cypriots should respond to the Greek Cypriot claim of enosis, Menderes replied: "You should go to the British foreign minister and request the status quo be prolonged, Cyprus to remain as a British colony". When the Turkish Cypriots visited the British Foreign Secretary and requested for Cyprus to remain a colony, he replied: "You should not be asking for colonialism at this day and age, you should be asking for Cyprus be returned to Turkey, its former owner".

 

As Turkish Cypriots began to look to Turkey for protection, Greek Cypriots soon understood that enosis was extremely unlikely. The Greek Cypriot leader, Archbishop Makarios III, now set independence for the island as his objective.

 

Britain resolved to solve the dispute by creating an independent Cyprus. In 1959, all involved parties signed the Zurich Agreements: Britain, Turkey, Greece, and the Greek and Turkish Cypriot leaders, Makarios and Dr. Fazil Kucuk, respectively. The new constitution drew heavily on the ethnic composition of the island. The President would be a Greek Cypriot, and the Vice-President a Turkish Cypriot with an equal veto. The contribution to the public service would be set at a ratio of 70:30, and the Supreme Court would consist of an equal number of judges from both communities as well as an independent judge who was not Greek, Turkish or British. The Zurich Agreements were supplemented by a number of treaties. The Treaty of Guarantee stated that secession or union with any state was forbidden, and that Greece, Turkey and Britain would be given guarantor status to intervene if that was violated. The Treaty of Alliance allowed for two small Greek and Turkish military contingents to be stationed on the island, and the Treaty of Establishment gave Britain sovereignty over two bases in Akrotiri and Dhekelia.

 

On 15 August 1960, the Colony of Cyprus became fully independent as the Republic of Cyprus. The new republic remained within the Commonwealth of Nations.

 

The new constitution brought dissatisfaction to Greek Cypriots, who felt it to be highly unjust for them for historical, demographic and contributional reasons. Although 80% of the island's population were Greek Cypriots and these indigenous people had lived on the island for thousands of years and paid 94% of taxes, the new constitution was giving the 17% of the population that was Turkish Cypriots, who paid 6% of taxes, around 30% of government jobs and 40% of national security jobs.

 

Within three years tensions between the two communities in administrative affairs began to show. In particular disputes over separate municipalities and taxation created a deadlock in government. A constitutional court ruled in 1963 Makarios had failed to uphold article 173 of the constitution which called for the establishment of separate municipalities for Turkish Cypriots. Makarios subsequently declared his intention to ignore the judgement, resulting in the West German judge resigning from his position. Makarios proposed thirteen amendments to the constitution, which would have had the effect of resolving most of the issues in the Greek Cypriot favour. Under the proposals, the President and Vice-President would lose their veto, the separate municipalities as sought after by the Turkish Cypriots would be abandoned, the need for separate majorities by both communities in passing legislation would be discarded and the civil service contribution would be set at actual population ratios (82:18) instead of the slightly higher figure for Turkish Cypriots.

 

The intention behind the amendments has long been called into question. The Akritas plan, written in the height of the constitutional dispute by the Greek Cypriot interior minister Polycarpos Georkadjis, called for the removal of undesirable elements of the constitution so as to allow power-sharing to work. The plan envisaged a swift retaliatory attack on Turkish Cypriot strongholds should Turkish Cypriots resort to violence to resist the measures, stating "In the event of a planned or staged Turkish attack, it is imperative to overcome it by force in the shortest possible time, because if we succeed in gaining command of the situation (in one or two days), no outside, intervention would be either justified or possible." Whether Makarios's proposals were part of the Akritas plan is unclear, however it remains that sentiment towards enosis had not completely disappeared with independence. Makarios described independence as "a step on the road to enosis".[31] Preparations for conflict were not entirely absent from Turkish Cypriots either, with right wing elements still believing taksim (partition) the best safeguard against enosis.

 

Greek Cypriots however believe the amendments were a necessity stemming from a perceived attempt by Turkish Cypriots to frustrate the working of government. Turkish Cypriots saw it as a means to reduce their status within the state from one of co-founder to that of minority, seeing it as a first step towards enosis. The security situation deteriorated rapidly.

 

Main articles: Bloody Christmas (1963) and Battle of Tillyria

An armed conflict was triggered after December 21, 1963, a period remembered by Turkish Cypriots as Bloody Christmas, when a Greek Cypriot policemen that had been called to help deal with a taxi driver refusing officers already on the scene access to check the identification documents of his customers, took out his gun upon arrival and shot and killed the taxi driver and his partner. Eric Solsten summarised the events as follows: "a Greek Cypriot police patrol, ostensibly checking identification documents, stopped a Turkish Cypriot couple on the edge of the Turkish quarter. A hostile crowd gathered, shots were fired, and two Turkish Cypriots were killed."

 

In the morning after the shooting, crowds gathered in protest in Northern Nicosia, likely encouraged by the TMT, without incident. On the evening of the 22nd, gunfire broke out, communication lines to the Turkish neighbourhoods were cut, and the Greek Cypriot police occupied the nearby airport. On the 23rd, a ceasefire was negotiated, but did not hold. Fighting, including automatic weapons fire, between Greek and Turkish Cypriots and militias increased in Nicosia and Larnaca. A force of Greek Cypriot irregulars led by Nikos Sampson entered the Nicosia suburb of Omorphita and engaged in heavy firing on armed, as well as by some accounts unarmed, Turkish Cypriots. The Omorphita clash has been described by Turkish Cypriots as a massacre, while this view has generally not been acknowledged by Greek Cypriots.

 

Further ceasefires were arranged between the two sides, but also failed. By Christmas Eve, the 24th, Britain, Greece, and Turkey had joined talks, with all sides calling for a truce. On Christmas day, Turkish fighter jets overflew Nicosia in a show of support. Finally it was agreed to allow a force of 2,700 British soldiers to help enforce a ceasefire. In the next days, a "buffer zone" was created in Nicosia, and a British officer marked a line on a map with green ink, separating the two sides of the city, which was the beginning of the "Green Line". Fighting continued across the island for the next several weeks.

 

In total 364 Turkish Cypriots and 174 Greek Cypriots were killed during the violence. 25,000 Turkish Cypriots from 103-109 villages fled and were displaced into enclaves and thousands of Turkish Cypriot houses were ransacked or completely destroyed.

 

Contemporary newspapers also reported on the forceful exodus of the Turkish Cypriots from their homes. According to The Times in 1964, threats, shootings and attempts of arson were committed against the Turkish Cypriots to force them out of their homes. The Daily Express wrote that "25,000 Turks have already been forced to leave their homes". The Guardian reported a massacre of Turks at Limassol on 16 February 1964.

 

Turkey had by now readied its fleet and its fighter jets appeared over Nicosia. Turkey was dissuaded from direct involvement by the creation of a United Nations Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus (UNFICYP) in 1964. Despite the negotiated ceasefire in Nicosia, attacks on the Turkish Cypriot persisted, particularly in Limassol. Concerned about the possibility of a Turkish invasion, Makarios undertook the creation of a Greek Cypriot conscript-based army called the "National Guard". A general from Greece took charge of the army, whilst a further 20,000 well-equipped officers and men were smuggled from Greece into Cyprus. Turkey threatened to intervene once more, but was prevented by a strongly worded letter from the American President Lyndon B. Johnson, anxious to avoid a conflict between NATO allies Greece and Turkey at the height of the Cold War.

 

Turkish Cypriots had by now established an important bridgehead at Kokkina, provided with arms, volunteers and materials from Turkey and abroad. Seeing this incursion of foreign weapons and troops as a major threat, the Cypriot government invited George Grivas to return from Greece as commander of the Greek troops on the island and launch a major attack on the bridgehead. Turkey retaliated by dispatching its fighter jets to bomb Greek positions, causing Makarios to threaten an attack on every Turkish Cypriot village on the island if the bombings did not cease. The conflict had now drawn in Greece and Turkey, with both countries amassing troops on their Thracian borders. Efforts at mediation by Dean Acheson, a former U.S. Secretary of State, and UN-appointed mediator Galo Plaza had failed, all the while the division of the two communities becoming more apparent. Greek Cypriot forces were estimated at some 30,000, including the National Guard and the large contingent from Greece. Defending the Turkish Cypriot enclaves was a force of approximately 5,000 irregulars, led by a Turkish colonel, but lacking the equipment and organisation of the Greek forces.

 

The Secretary-General of the United Nations in 1964, U Thant, reported the damage during the conflicts:

 

UNFICYP carried out a detailed survey of all damage to properties throughout the island during the disturbances; it shows that in 109 villages, most of them Turkish-Cypriot or mixed villages, 527 houses have been destroyed while 2,000 others have suffered damage from looting.

 

The situation worsened in 1967, when a military junta overthrew the democratically elected government of Greece, and began applying pressure on Makarios to achieve enosis. Makarios, not wishing to become part of a military dictatorship or trigger a Turkish invasion, began to distance himself from the goal of enosis. This caused tensions with the junta in Greece as well as George Grivas in Cyprus. Grivas's control over the National Guard and Greek contingent was seen as a threat to Makarios's position, who now feared a possible coup.[citation needed] The National Guard and Cyprus Police began patrolling the Turkish Cypriot enclaves of Ayios Theodoros and Kophinou, and on November 15 engaged in heavy fighting with the Turkish Cypriots.

 

By the time of his withdrawal 26 Turkish Cypriots had been killed. Turkey replied with an ultimatum demanding that Grivas be removed from the island, that the troops smuggled from Greece in excess of the limits of the Treaty of Alliance be removed, and that the economic blockades on the Turkish Cypriot enclaves be lifted. Grivas was recalled by the Athens Junta and the 12,000 Greek troops were withdrawn. Makarios now attempted to consolidate his position by reducing the number of National Guard troops, and by creating a paramilitary force loyal to Cypriot independence. In 1968, acknowledging that enosis was now all but impossible, Makarios stated, "A solution by necessity must be sought within the limits of what is feasible which does not always coincide with the limits of what is desirable."

 

After 1967 tensions between the Greek and Turkish Cypriots subsided. Instead, the main source of tension on the island came from factions within the Greek Cypriot community. Although Makarios had effectively abandoned enosis in favour of an 'attainable solution', many others continued to believe that the only legitimate political aspiration for Greek Cypriots was union with Greece.

 

On his arrival, Grivas began by establishing a nationalist paramilitary group known as the National Organization of Cypriot Fighters (Ethniki Organosis Kyprion Agoniston B or EOKA-B), drawing comparisons with the EOKA struggle for enosis under the British colonial administration of the 1950s.

 

The military junta in Athens saw Makarios as an obstacle. Makarios's failure to disband the National Guard, whose officer class was dominated by mainland Greeks, had meant the junta had practical control over the Cypriot military establishment, leaving Makarios isolated and a vulnerable target.

 

During the first Turkish invasion, Turkish troops invaded Cyprus territory on 20 July 1974, invoking its rights under the Treaty of Guarantee. This expansion of Turkish-occupied zone violated International Law as well as the Charter of the United Nations. Turkish troops managed to capture 3% of the island which was accompanied by the burning of the Turkish Cypriot quarter, as well as the raping and killing of women and children. A temporary cease-fire followed which was mitigated by the UN Security Council. Subsequently, the Greek military Junta collapsed on July 23, 1974, and peace talks commenced in which a democratic government was installed. The Resolution 353 was broken after Turkey attacked a second time and managed to get a hold of 37% of Cyprus territory. The Island of Cyprus was appointed a Buffer Zone by the United Nations, which divided the island into two zones through the 'Green Line' and put an end to the Turkish invasion. Although Turkey announced that the occupied areas of Cyprus to be called the Federated Turkish State in 1975, it is not legitimised on a worldwide political scale. The United Nations called for the international recognition of independence for the Republic of Cyprus in the Security Council Resolution 367.

 

In the years after the Turkish invasion of northern Cyprus one can observe a history of failed talks between the two parties. The 1983 declaration of the independent Turkish Republic of Cyprus resulted in a rise of inter-communal tensions and made it increasingly hard to find mutual understanding. With Cyprus' interest of a possible EU membership and a new UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan in 1997 new hopes arose for a fresh start. International involvement from sides of the US and UK, wanting a solution to the Cyprus dispute prior to the EU accession led to political pressures for new talks. The believe that an accession without a solution would threaten Greek-Turkish relations and acknowledge the partition of the island would direct the coming negotiations.

 

Over the course of two years a concrete plan, the Annan plan was formulated. In 2004 the fifth version agreed upon from both sides and with the endorsement of Turkey, US, UK and EU then was presented to the public and was given a referendum in both Cypriot communities to assure the legitimisation of the resolution. The Turkish Cypriots voted with 65% for the plan, however the Greek Cypriots voted with a 76% majority against. The Annan plan contained multiple important topics. Firstly it established a confederation of two separate states called the United Cyprus Republic. Both communities would have autonomous states combined under one unified government. The members of parliament would be chosen according to the percentage in population numbers to ensure a just involvement from both communities. The paper proposed a demilitarisation of the island over the next years. Furthermore it agreed upon a number of 45000 Turkish settlers that could remain on the island. These settlers became a very important issue concerning peace talks. Originally the Turkish government encouraged Turks to settle in Cyprus providing transfer and property, to establish a counterpart to the Greek Cypriot population due to their 1 to 5 minority. With the economic situation many Turkish-Cypriot decided to leave the island, however their departure is made up by incoming Turkish settlers leaving the population ratio between Turkish Cypriots and Greek Cypriots stable. However all these points where criticised and as seen in the vote rejected mainly by the Greek Cypriots. These name the dissolution of the „Republic of Cyprus", economic consequences of a reunion and the remaining Turkish settlers as reason. Many claim that the plan was indeed drawing more from Turkish-Cypriot demands then Greek-Cypriot interests. Taking in consideration that the US wanted to keep Turkey as a strategic partner in future Middle Eastern conflicts.

 

A week after the failed referendum the Republic of Cyprus joined the EU. In multiple instances the EU tried to promote trade with Northern Cyprus but without internationally recognised ports this spiked a grand debate. Both side endure their intention of negotiations, however without the prospect of any new compromises or agreements the UN is unwilling to start the process again. Since 2004 negotiations took place in numbers but without any results, both sides are strongly holding on to their position without an agreeable solution in sight that would suit both parties.

10-02-12, Πολυχώρος "Λάσπη"

 

Performance given by the dance team "Mud"

 

Shot with a 25/1.4 cctv lens @f/1.4

Please forgive the title I was not very good at deciding on what these were, so I included something that they are not.

 

I am using the description that I have previously given to four pictures tiled,

 

“Rodenstock Imagon 300 mm H=5.6 Murmillo Thraex as Gaulish replacement and Hoplomachus Gladiator history as lesson in conquest”

 

I do not wish to dwell on the traits and fates of Gladiators. The history of Murmillo and their opponent does show the Roman attitude of barbarian til the Gauls in this case were subdued and turned into a Client Kingdom so their former bestial character was withdrawn from the Arena and the Murmillones needed a new opponent in their live action and potential death games. The helmet here has a history and a continuing present.

 

Using a Sinar camera with artistic lens and a Sony digital mirrorless camera gives a warm feel to to the pictures. The Rodenstock Imagon 300 mm H=5.6 gives several versions of itself through itself without additions and then through aperture and diffusion discs sometimes referred to as sieve apertures and they are also called sink strainers. Many photographers are finding that old lenses and camera enclosures can work marvellous well with new digital cameras. Old cameras, lenses and equipment are current enjoy a second, third, fourth and more life as they are looked to again to produce the detail they were imagined for and the production of wonders that they were never designed for.

 

Murmillo

The murmillo (plural murmillones) or myrmillo wore a helmet with a stylised fish on the crest (the mormylos or sea fish), as well as an arm guard (manica), a loincloth and belt, a gaiter on his right leg, thick wrappings covering the tops of his feet, and a very short greave with an indentation for the padding at the top of the feet. They are heavily armoured gladiators: the murmillo carried a gladius (64–81 cm long) and a tall, oblong shield in the legionary style. Murmillones typically fought a thraex, but occasionally the similar hoplomachus.

 

Thraex

The Thraex (plural Thraeces, "Thracians") wore the same protective armour as the hoplomachi with a broad rimmed helmet that enclosed the entire head, distinguished by a stylized griffin on the protome or front of the crest (the griffin was the companion of the avenging goddess Nemesis), a small round or square-shaped shield (parmula), and two thigh-length greaves. His weapon was the Thracian curved sword (sica or falx, c. 34 cm or 13 in long). They were introduced as replacements for the Gaulish gladiator type after Gaul made peace with Rome. They commonly fought myrmillones or hoplomachi.

 

Hoplomachus

The hoplomachus (Romanised Greek for "armed fighter", Latin plural hoplomachii) wore quilted, trouser-like leg wrappings, loincloth, a belt, a pair of long shin-guards or greaves, an arm guard (manica) on the sword-arm, and a brimmed helmet that could be adorned with a plume of feathers on top and a single feather on each side. He was equipped with a gladius and a very small, round shield. He also carried a spear, which he would have to cast at his opponent before closing for hand-to-hand combat. The hoplomachi were paired against the myrmillones or Thraeces. They may have developed out of the earlier '"Samnite" type after it became impolitic to use the names of now-allied peoples.

 

Lens details Rodenstock Imagon 300 mm H=5.6 (for 13×18 cm)

In a joint effort with the pioneering photographer Heinrich Kühn, who, as a pictorialist, was artistically seeking for "romantic softness without sugariness, blurring without a woolly effect"[1] in images and had been experimenting with binocular lenses and soft filters and rasters in the 1920s already,[1] the lens was technically designed by Franz Staeble [de],[1][2] founder of the optical company Staeble-Werk [de] in Munich, Germany.[1] The resulting lens was marketed as Anachromat Kühn. Later in 1928,[1] the lens became the Tiefenbildner-Imagon, which was introduced by Rodenstock in 1930/1931 and produced up into the 1990s. The unusual term Tiefenbildner is a German composition, which can be best translated as "depth-of-field creator, modulator or painter" in an artistic sense; this designation was later dropped.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rodenstock_Imagon

  

Some Sinar Camera Details

“The name SINAR is an acronym that encompasses the prime applications in the fields of still, industrial, nature, architectural and reproduction photography.”

www.sinar.ch/de/downloads/category/22-sinar-pressemitteil...

 

At times the name SINAR is rendered into different titles the above quote and link is from an English version of a 2011 press release, “Sinar Photography AG Acquires the Brand Rights of Sinar AG,” Zürich: Sinar Photography AG. April 2011. The S in Sinar has also been stated as standing for studio, Sache, or science.

 

Whilst Sinar still make amazing cameras this is an older version and it is not the latest and greatest. In fine age it is still a picture taking marvel, but not easy, not handy and not great to transport. Then you luxuriate into the results and suddenly the struggles of lifting and moving of the all manual operation and friendly challenges of light metering seem to be gone for a few treasured moments of appreciation and even longer still as you think where next for a Sinar experience.

 

© PHH Sykes 2024

phhsykes@gmail.com

 

Rodenstock Imagon

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rodenstock_Imagon

 

Sinar

sinar.swiss/products/cameras/

 

List of Roman gladiator types

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Roman_gladiator_types

 

©All photographs on this site are copyright: DESPITE STRAIGHT LINES (Paul Williams) 2011 – 2021 & GETTY IMAGES ®

  

No license is given nor granted in respect of the use of any copyrighted material on this site other than with the express written agreement of DESPITE STRAIGHT LINES (Paul Williams) ©

  

.

.

  

Photograph taken at an altitude of Fifty eight metres at 15:46pm on Friday 5th February 2021, on a rare sunny interlude of an adult Starling (Sturnus Vulgaris)standing on a brick chimney stack off Chessington Avenue in Bexleyheath, Kent.

  

The common starling or European starling, also known simply as the starling in the British Isles, is a medium-sized passerine bird in the starling family, Sturnidae. It is about 20 cm long and has glossy black plumage with a metallic sheen, which is speckled with white at some times of year. These are noisy, squabbling birds that pack a lot of character and can mimic other birds and sounds.

  

.

.

  

Nikon D850 Hand held with Sigma OS Optical Stabilization set to position 1. Focal length 600mm Shutter speed: 1/640s Aperture f/8.0 iso400 EV compensation set to -0.3EV Image area FX (36 x 24) NEF RAW L (8256 x 5504). NEF RAW L (14 bit uncompressed) Focus mode AF-C focus. AF-C Priority Selection: Release. Nikon Back button focusing enabled. AF-Area mode: 3D Tracking watch area: Normal 55 Tracking points. Exposure mode: Manual mode. Matrix metering. White balance on: Auto1. Colour space: RGB. Active D-lighting: Normal. Vignette control: Normal. Nikon Distortion control: Enabled. Picture control: Auto (Sharpening A +1/Clarity A+1)

  

Sigma 60-600mm f/4.5-6.3DG OS HSM SPORTS. Lee SW150 MKI filter holder with MK2 light shield and custom made velcro fitting for the Sigma lens. Lee SW150 circular polariser glass filter.Lee SW150 Filters field pouch.Nikon GP-1 GPS module. Hoodman HEYENRG round eyepiece oversized eyecupMcoplus professional MB-D850 multi function battery grip 6960.Two Nikon EN-EL15a batteries (Priority to battery in Battery grip). Matin quick release neckstrap. My Memory 128GB Class 10 SDXC 80MB/s card. Lowepro Flipside 400 AW camera bag.

  

.

.

     

LATITUDE: N 51d 28m 28.29s

LONGITUDE: E 0d 8m 10.27s

ALTITUDE: 56.0m

  

RAW (TIFF) FILE: 130.00MB NEF: 91.9MB

PROCESSED (JPeg) FILE: 31.30MB

     

.

.

  

PROCESSING POWER:

  

Nikon D850 Firmware versions C 1.10 (9/05/2019) LD Distortion Data 2.018 (18/02/20) LF 1.00

  

HP 110-352na Desktop PC with AMD Quad-Core A6-5200 APU 64Bit processor. Radeon HD8400 graphics. 8 GB DDR3 Memory with 1TB Data storage. 64-bit Windows 10. Verbatim USB 2.0 1TB desktop hard drive. WD My Passport Ultra 1tb USB3 Portable hard drive. Nikon ViewNX-1 64bit Version 1.4.1 (18/02/2020). Nikon Capture NX-D 64bit Version 1.6.2 (18/02/2020). Nikon Picture Control Utility 2 (Version 2.4.5 (18/02/2020). Nikon Transfer 2 Version 2.13.5. Adobe photoshop Elements 8 Version 8.0 64bit.

   

A Series of Unfortunate Events

 

Acte Two

 

A Chocolate Trét

 

The taller thief froze some sixth sense brought on by the many parties such as this attended by her, which had given her a sort of intuition about people and their curious behavior.

 

A figure, alone, swearing a swishing gown was directly approaching the taller thief.

 

The unseen stranger came up and placed a hand upon the taller thief’s sleek waist.

A warm figure slips up against her, and a body hot with lust is felt as a voice whispers….

“I thought you may have been eyeing me up in there. And here you are waiting. Did you like what you saw, sweetie?”

 

Even though she was far more used to males being the ones to boldly come on to her, the taller thief did not miss a beat. She leans back up against what she now realizes is the lady in blue satin and deliciously sparkly diamonds and sapphires. She had, without trying, managed to hook a wealthy one, and possibly a gullible twit by nature.

 

The taller thief played her prey, as a spider attracted an innocent jewel-coloured fly.

 

The taller thief turned and faced the lady whose heavily blue/violet mascara-lined eyes were wide with interest. The thief runs her hands along the scintillating slickly gown-covered sides of the lady in blue.

 

The wealthy young twit lady answered by brazenly running a hand along the thief’s tight-covered hinny

 

As the pair draw dangerously close,

The female thief placed her hand onto the sensuous feeling, pricey satin-covered waistline of the sapphire burdened lady, the thief’s long fingers dropping quickly down and also groped the lady’s round firm butt, nicely outlined by the tight-fitting blue satin gown she wore. The thief smiled, answering truthfully…

“I so ever did like, that’s a perfectly lovely dress you’re wearing. It looks very….provocative if I may say.”

 

The lady smiled, eyes half closing as the thief ran her fingers up her prey’s slick backside.

“My name is Cadie. What’s yours beautiful?”

 

The thief stroked her fingers back up the luscious blue gown, eying the captivating earrings glitting down from her earlobes, as she gave her the name she had given herself for the evening.

“My name is Rose darling one…”

 

Looking around, Cadie wrapped an arm along “Rose’s” waist pulling her close.

“Oh I love roses, what a pretty name.”

 

The thief smiled, her eyes wide with rapture over her thoughts.

 

“So do I ( and they have prickling catching Thorne don't they)the thief thought eyeing up the truly magnificent sapphires rippling fervently around the alluringly delicious lady's throat.

 

“Rose” ventured on

“They have very pretty roses in the gardens. Have you seen them?”

 

Cadie excitedly nodded, sending her earrings into a sparkling frenzy.

“They are beautiful.”

 

“Rose” tightened her web.

Yes, they are, and even prettier ones bathed in moonlight by the boat house.

 

I saw the boathouse from the gardens. but I did not go there. Seemed isolated and creepy. Sounds lovely enough though., of course one is with someone else…”

 

The door behind them opened and both lady’s hands went to their sides.

  

“Rose” looked around and leaned into the lady, murmuring with a conspiracist-type whisper

With two of us, it would be less creepy. More enchanting even. Perhaps we can meet there, later Cadie, if you can get away alone?”

 

Cadie looked thoughtful, as the thief called “Rose” had her eyes locked with a lusty gaze into Cadie’s own.

“I can, er will, certainly try.”

 

The grandfather clocked chimed eleven

 

“Rose” suggests…

Say after midnight? I need time to lose my friend.

 

Cadie looked apprehensive…

“Friend ?”

 

“Rose” reassured Cadie by tickling into the girl’s side.

“My cousin luv, it shouldn’t be hard. But I suggest we not be seen leaving together, a tryst should be done unnoticed. Don’t you agree my dear?”

 

Cadie blushed, then nodded and winked, leaving.

 

“Rose” watched with a broad smile as Cadie made her way down the stairs. Saying to the departing wealthy lady with the shimmering jewels.

“Definitely unnoticed…”

 

“Rose left after seeing Cadie move off. She located Emilee sitting next to a gent at the bar.

 

^^^^^^

 

Meanwhile, at the bar Emily was in a very animated conversation with a blonde-haired young gent named Gary, looking very handsome in a fitted suit. His hand was caressing her satin skirt-covered leg while telling her a story about his horses running a race. A heavy silver Rolex hung outlined on his tanned wrist, gleamed with an expensive call.

  

As Gary finished Emily placed a hand on his suit jacket.

“How exciting monsieur, your horses must be very quick to win so many races.

 

He chuckled, lifting his head to take a drink from his pint.

 

As he did do, Emily dipped her long fingers inside his jacket and smoothly extracted his fat billfold.

 

It was then a hand was placed on her shoulder. Emilee turned with an innocent look planted on her face, relieved inside to find her partner standing there.

 

“Rose” cheerfully greeted Emilee

“Hello, my cousin. Pardon the interruption, but could you please meet with me out on the balcony?”

 

Emily patted the gentleman on his shoulder.

“Pardon Mon chérie I find myself being called away. Later for that second dance please.”

 

The blonde-haired gentleman gave “Rose” a once over and grinned at Emilee

“Certainly cutie, see you in a bit then.”

 

Emilee got up and followed her partner. Glancing back she saw that her blonde gentleman friend had already found a new female conquest.

 

The two ladies went out on the balcony and found an isolated shadowy corner.

 

There were no tables and chairs on the balcony, so not many stayed there long. Soon the pair of thieves found themselves alone.

 

Emilee turned to her friend, her eyes with a questioning look. For she had wanted a go at that silver Rolex.

 

“Rose” happily squeezed her arm.

“I met a twit.”

 

Emilee asked curiously…

“A twit, luv? “

 

“Rose” glanced back at the ballroom as she answered…

“Yes, a twit, wearing the most beautiful diamonds and sapphires.”

 

Emily squealed with a happy pounce…

“Oooh delicious, That’s the best kind.”

 

“Rose” huddled close and explained what had happened, with Emilee hungrily listening to every word. A plan was then hatched, centered around the hapless Cadie and relieving her of the valuables and jewels she was wearing.

 

Now as they talked amongst themselves “Rose” kept watch around them to make sure they were not attracting anyone’s attention. They weren’t.

 

Emilee was titillated, excitedly asking a question.

“Ma chérie, do you think it is early to go there now?”

 

“Rose”, her eyes still looking around began to answer, then stumbled over her words, placing a startled hand to her throat.

“I…I….”

 

“Rose” had now froze for someone had attracted her attention. She looked at Emilee and whispered.

“Look carefully over my shoulder, do you see what I spy with my devious little eye?”

 

Both were watching a young lass of about 17 making her solitary way across the balcony.

 

She is breathtakingly elegant.

 

Attired in a far too wickedly lovely long satin dress of a rich hue of chocolate brown, the dress was embroidered with flickering rhinestones. Long chocolate brown satin gloves graced her hands up to her elbows. The shiny gown flows down along the girl's delightful well-endowed figure. And adorning that well-pointed figure is a rather healthy, (or could that possibly be said to be an unhealthy this evening ?) display of flickering diamonds that are undeniably, and quite expensively, real.

 

Emilee whispered with a happy smirk…

“How had neither of us spotted this one yet? “

 

The young lady’s happy smile was captivating and the jewels she wore were the perfect lure for a couple of thieves eager to land a coup de gras

 

The dazzling jewels the newcomer wore consisted of a very stunning silver necklace set with far too sparkly diamonds that cascaded down from her throat and dripped down the front of her chocolate satin dress. Her long silky hair was down held in place from her face by a pair of thin long diamond-encrusted silver fern leaf-shaped clips. Long silver earrings swung down freely in and out of her earlobes, both set with streams of cascading flickering diamonds. She was wearing elegant chocolate satin gloves to her elbows. Around her wrists sparkle twin wide diamond bracelets. From her fingers on her right hand sparkled a pair of diamond and citrine gemmed cocktail rings. Wrapped around her gown’s waistline was a ribbed brown satin sash, in the centre dangled a long diamond broach, diamonds forming a kite shape, with silver strings of diamonds dangling down from the slanted sides to the bottom point.

 

The girl was swishing towards the railing overlooking the gardens. She failed to notice the pair of female thieves watching her with sinister intent from the shadowy corner that hid them.

 

As they pair watched, Emily commented in a low murmur out of the side of her mouth.

“My what jewels that pretty thing is wearing. Be a pity if she met up with the wrong person.”

 

“Rose” answered her…

“Well, I do think it’s a pity how those far-to-brite jewels are detracting from how darling she looks in that luxurious satin dress.

 

As they watched the pretty thing, the girl meandered with whimsical elegance to the steps and going down, was soon lost to view.

 

Emily turned to “Rose” and said miserably…

“I would think with a sapphire twit in hand, our minds should only be there. So sad, no more lifting to be done tonight.

 

“Rose” turned with a sombre face and looked down into her partner’s sadly eager eyes…. Then she smiled with a wickedly endeared look at Emilee.

“A present given to one needs to be unwrapped…

You know, she is the spitting image of my niece Cecelia, who is not wearing jewels, don’t you think? I should go and tell her. And as I do, you should come up and also mistake her for Cecilia whom I’m talking with. Then we can help the poor lass to look much more like her? “

 

Emilee winks at her companion, giggling.

“She is the spitting image of Cecilia. That’s a lovely name for a niece that doesn’t exist. don’t you think? And so convenient that our “mistaken double” is allowed to be out wearing her good jewellery this fine evening while "safe" at home. “

  

The balcony is still deserted as the two hunting thieves quickly make for the stairs.

 

Reaching them they head down.

 

The prey in shimmering chocolate satin, is just moving off the last step. Her diamonds twinkled seductively along her figure as she meandered into the gardens.

 

Once they reach the bottom the two thieves nod to each other, splitting up.

 

“Rose” begins tracking the victim, her figure trembling with increasing excitement as her victim walks further along in the deserted gardens.

 

The girl spied a rabbit sitting still underneath a bench. She freezes in step as she watched the cute soft furry thing eating grass.

 

“Rose” spies Emilee by a fountain a ways off to the opposite side. The taller thief puts a finger to the side of her nose and nods in the unwary girl's direction.

 

“Rose” sneaks up behind the still unwary girl.. keeping her eyes on the satin sash wrapped around the victim's svelte waistline and tied with a neat little bow behind. The glittering, now unseen diamond broach attached to the front of the satin sash is her objective.

 

“Rose” reached the girl so focused on watching the hare, that she is unaware of being approached.

 

“Rose” speaks to the girl as she wraps her arms around her incredibly soft waist pulling her back in a hug at the same time, her fingers easily following the path of the satin sach to the valuable diamond broach.

 

“Cecelia, fancy meeting you out here.”

 

The rabbit scampered off as “Rose” spoke. She felt the girl jump in her arms, and her fingers used this to easily unclasp the startled wealthy young lady’s glittering broach.

 

The girl protested apologetically to the lady who held her from behind, her mind so befuddled it never occurred to her until much later when it was pointed out to her that there was no girl there who had been wearing a similar gown as hers. So it had all been a ruse by the pair to get her jewellry, so she was informed.

 

“My names not Cecilia miss, sorry.”

 

Holding the lifted broach clasped in her fist, “Rose” turned the girl around and stared into her victim's wide-open eyes.

 

“Rose” now apologizes. Placing a hand to her mouth, while her other goes behind her back, secreting the broach inside a hidden pocket.

“Oh. I’m ever so sorry, I thought you were my niece. How embarrassing. “

 

“Rose” then reached over and stroked the young lady’s sensuous brown chocolate satin gown, taking close inventory of the unwary young lady’s remaining jewellery as she continued with an easy truthful praise in her syrupy voice.

 

“Please forgive me my blunder, darling one, but my you are wearing the prettiest dress I’ve ever seen!”

 

The girl blushed, lowering her head, long diamond earrings falling out from her hair in twin cascading sparkles of flickering delight.

 

From the girl's flank, Emilee now approached.

 

Silently reaching the extraordinarily well-dressed young lady unseen from behind she takes hold of the girl’s arms pinning her in place, startling her.

 

From the young lady’s shiny backside, Emilee asks “Rose”…

. Is this your niece then? Hello Cecilia, let’s have a look at you.”

 

Emily turns the protesting girl to face her.

“I’m not her niece Cecilia!? My name is Lilly Abbotte miss, sorry. “

 

It’s now Emilee’s turn to study the girl under the pretense of making sure she is not Cecelia, taking in the girl's remaining valuables.

 

From behind her, “Rose” is tugging on her earlobe as she says to Emily from behind their victim, as she places her hands on either side of Heather’s sleekly covered sides, tickling the unsuspecting girl under her arms.

“But doesn’t Heather look exactly like Cecile, luv? Especially if her hair was up? Don’t you think?”

 

Emily lifted her hands to the now giggling girl's silky long red hair, lifting it and piling it up as “Rose” placed her hands on Lilly’s shoulders, relishing in the feel of expensive chocolate brown satin.

 

Emilee, looking into Heather's smiling

eyes, clasping her fingers upon the hapless young girl’s ears, squeals.

“Oh my, you are absolutely correct, Lilly you are as adorable as Cecilia.”

 

Meanwhile, from behind the high neckline of the girl’s scintillating gown, “Rose’s” fingers tingled as her fingers undid the now exposed clasp of the diamond necklace young Lilly was wearing. The flashy necklace loaded with precious diamonds was easily whisked from around her throat.

 

Emily winks, letting down the lass’s hair.

 

Without looking “Rose” knew Lilly was no longer wearing those long sparkling diamond earrings that had been playing peekaboo and out of her let-down red sheer mane of hair.

 

Emily complimented Lilly on her lovely satin dress as “Rose” let fingers stroke along her gown. Lilly turns her head to look back at “Rose” as Emily seizes hold of the victim’s hands turning her attention away from her, as she suddenly gasps

“Oh, mon Dieu, snake in the grass.”

Lilly jumps, looking down at her feet.

 

“Rose” grasps Lilly to her too, holding onto the girl's hand as all three are looking down at the grass around their feet. Emily at the same time uses her subterfuge to whisk off one of Lilly’s fancy heavily jeweled bracelets from the wrist of the startled girl's satin glove.

 

At the same time, “Rosé” is still holding Lilly’s gloved hand and gently caressing her fingers to comfort her, as she manages to rub off her two rings while the fruitless search is taking place.

 

Emily sighs…

“That was close. Méchante small and quick things, snakes.”

 

Buying into our ploy The girl gives us both hugs.

 

Rose is standing behind Emilee, who as Lilly hugs the French thief, her hands around Emilee’s waist , works off the unwary girl’s remaining diamond bracelet.

 

The pair then say adieu and move off.

 

Happily, Lilly then walks off, heading back to the manor house.

  

Emily sighs happily as they both watch her walk away.

“Definitely an improvement on her looks.”

 

“Rose nods in agreement.

“Though we left her with those lovely diamond hair clips. Pity we didn’t get them. And the sumptuous gown, I would have loved to just peel that off her “

 

Emilee just sighs.

 

As both thieves watch the swishing gowned Lilly reach the bottom of the stairs. Emilee, with a hand to her heart, turns to her partner.

“Ma chérie, I have thoughts, but they may be too daring, no?”

 

“Rose”, still watching Lilly, answers.

“You have wonderful thoughts my friend, what are they?”

 

Emilee looks up at her partner.

“When you meet your lushly sapphire-laden twit, would it not be delicious if you were wearing the necklace of Lilly’s, or is that too daring my friend?

 

“Rose” turns her head to look down into to bright dark gaze of the little French thief and solemnly says…

“Far too daring my little one.

“Rose’s” face then lights up with a wicked smile.

“So all the more reason to do so!”

 

They walk off into a corner of shrubs, a mostly hidden view allows them to watch the balcony and stairs.

 

“Rose” takes out from her hidden pockets all of her takings and hands them to Emilee. Keeping Lilly’s fancy diamond necklace, she placed it around her throat, where it lay down with dazzled magnificence along the front of her shiny dress. The diamonds dripped down to just above her breasts, tightly outlined by her party dress. Fleshy and full, “Rose’s” raised nipples and breasts now stood out with an even more provocative statement.

 

Emilee sighs with eager anticipation as she fondles the diamonds of the necklace her partner is wearing. She pulls out the stolen watch and looks at its face.

“It is now almost minuit , time now for me to go and prepare the ‘piégeage’, no!”

 

“Rose looked up from the necklace and glanced over towards the still-deserted balcony.

“Yes my dear one, time to set up the ‘entrapment’.”

 

To be continued.

Given the PSE 8 treatment

I think in Simon's list of 50 best Suffolk churches, Woolpit comes in at number 31. It is now that I remember that I cannot remember why I should go to Woolpit on what would be the last of the EA church visits this year, as Mum was home and in the care of the district nurse, and there was nothing else we could do, not in actions, money or time given. She really has to stand on her own two feet now.

 

Anyway; Woolpit.

 

I decided to go, and after looking on the map I saw that with some create route planning, I could go down the 143, then double back and join the A14 eastwards before turning south down our old friend, the A12.

 

On the way I did also visit Stowlangtoft, which was a wonderful church, a church filled with wonderful things that seemed to hang together as a whole. Woolpit would have to be something special to trup St George.

 

And it nearly did. Nearly. Woolpit is a picture perfect village, all timber framed buildings, narrow lanes and impossible to park in. I drove through it finding a kind of space just past the church. I could see from the tower and building it was a church on which the Victorians had been very busy.

 

Most glorious is Mary's roof; double hammerbeam adorned with 208 angels one of the wardens told me. It had been counted several times during a dull sermon. Or two.

 

The wardens were building the crib for Christmas, so were using a pallet as a base, or something like that. I didn't see it finished, but Ken Bruce was booming out from a radio, preaching the Gospel According to Popmaster to all who would listen.

 

The angels in the roof and on the walls of the church are indeed impressive, as is the rood screen, but not sure if they are original. There are carved pew ends aplenty, but to my eye, not as well carved or as old as at Stowlangtoft. I could be wrong. But I snap a few anyway.

 

But I received a warm welcome here, and it is a fantastic church for me.

 

-----------------------------------------

 

2008: Woolpit is a village which I often visit, and it is always a pleasure to go into the church. But the entry for St Mary was one of the last on the original Suffolk Churches site, making its appearance in late 2001. In fact, I think it was the last of the old-style entries. I was getting a bit wordy by then.

Woolpit was one of the longest entries, and this wasn't just because there is so much to see. I went off at a great tangent about the meaning of medieval iconography, and how it survived the Reformation. It certainly got some thoughts clear in my own head, even if it confused other people. I actually wrote the entry in the back of an old exercise book sitting outside a café on the Cote d'Azur in southern France. Reading that back, it seems a little pretentious, but I really was there. Here in Ipswich on a frosty February evening, I can't help remembering the heat as I scrawled in the pad.

 

I've left the original entry almost entirely as it was, apart from the removal of one absolute howler, which I won't mention. I am not sure if Woolpit still has a Sunday market, and I am sure that someone will tell me if it has not. Paul Hocking is no longer Rector of Woolpit, but to my eyes the church continues to go from strength to strength, feeling at once busy and at the heart of its community, the still centre of a busy village. I like it very much.

 

2001: The clear blue waters of the Mediterranean swirl around my legs, then past me, buffeting the rocks along the silver beach. Millions of tiny flecks of mica swarm through the current, washed out of the hills of Southern Provence. They shine for a fraction of a second with all the light the high summer sun can give, a universe caught in a moment; then turn, disappearing, making of the water a shimmering skein, an ancient memory.

 

The sea is at the start of all European civilisation. Here, history wells about me. I think of Europe, and the fragmentation of nations. I think of the Balkans, and the Reformation, and the same water surrounding, tending, isolating. I think of time passing.

 

A week before, I'd been standing in the cool nave of the church of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin, Woolpit - or at least, that is what it probably was once, back then. Today, it is dedicated simply as 'St Mary', in common with the majority of Suffolk's medieval churches, among which it is one of the finest, some say. This is mostly by virtue of its beautiful porch, and extraordinary angel roof.

 

But is that true? For there are those who love this church that, perhaps, never look up at the porch or roof. Is it the plethora of 15th century bench ends that captures the imagination? Or could it be Richard Phipson's outrageous 1850s tower and lacy spire, straight out of the Nene Valley, its evangelistic slogans around the side in a Victorian equivalent of Piccadilly Circus neon? It ought not to work, and yet it does. Or is it that supremely articulate view to the east, perfect of proportion despite the stripping away of its medieval liturgical apparatus? Above all else, and above most others, this is a church with presence.

 

It was the bench ends that I was thinking of as I immersed myself out of the intensity of the Provencal sun. A number of questions occured to me, as they have done on other occasions, in other churches. Who made them? What did they mean by them? And how did they survive the iconoclasms of the Protestant Reformation? Here in Southern Europe, I thought I might have found some answers.

 

Woolpit, then. It is perhaps the most perfect of all Suffolk villages. Not sleepy, and chocolate boxy, but to actually live in. Its shops and pubs are arranged around the pleasant village square, and Phipson's crazy spire towers above them. Woolpit still has its school, and you wouldn't need to get in the car every time you needed a loaf of bread, as you'd have to do in some of Suffolk's more famously picturesque villages, like Kersey and Tuddenham. And Woolpit has its Sunday market, beloved of hundreds of non-sabbatarian junk-hunters each week.

 

Further, Woolpit has its mythology; the two green children, who climbed out of the ground, speaking a strange language and afraid of the sunlight. The boy died soon after, but the girl grew up and married; she learned to speak English, and told of St Martin's Land, from where she and her brother had emerged. There are holes in the ground around Woolpit, quarries where bricks were made in the 19th century. But perhaps there was once something much older, for every Suffolk schoolchild knows that the name 'Woolpit' is nothing to do with wool, but with the wolves that once lived in the pits here...

 

So, it is a well-known village. It is because of this as much as anything about St Mary itself that makes this church so well-known to people who haven't heard of the even more interesting and beautiful church of St Ethelbert, Hessett, barely three miles away.

 

Your first sight of St Mary will be Phipson's crazy spire, visible from miles away, and quite unlike anything else in East Anglia. Suffolk is a county where spires are rare enough, anyway. From the far side of the Gipping valley you can see this one and two others, piercing the soft harvest mist in autumn. They are Phipson's equally absurd Great Finborough, and the 1990s blade of St Peter and St Mary, Stowmarket. There are only about a dozen more in the whole of the county. The excuse for this one was that the tower was struck by lightning in 1852, bringing down the previous lead and timber affair (presumably like the one at Hadleigh). The font is contemporary with the tower, suggesting that the old one was destroyed by the fall.

 

In the 1950s and 1960s, the artist John Piper produced a series of screen prints of aspects of Suffolk churches; for most, he used the fine perpendicular tower, ramifying it in bold Festival of Britain primary colours. But for Woolpit, he chose the porch, because it is Suffolk's finest. Cautley thought it the best in all England. It is two-storey, 15th century, contemporary with the nave. Mortlock tells us that they were both built by wealthy Bury Abbey, who owned the living here. As at Beccles, it rises way above the south aisle, tower-like in itself.

 

A rood group of niches surmounts the shields of East Anglia above the door. More flank them. Mortlock says that the work began in the early 1430s, and the niches were filled by a bequest of 1473, suggesting that the porch was forty years in the making. The south aisle and chancel are slightly earlier, the north aisle slightly later, so it is the nave that promises us great things, and doesn't disappoint.

 

You step into cool darkness, and look up. It is breathtaking. This is Suffolk's most perfectly restored angel hammerbeam roof. It may not have the drama of Mildenhall, the exquisiteness of Blythburgh, the sheer mathematics of Needham Market, but it shows us in detail more than any other what the medieval imagination was aiming at. From the still, small silence of the church floor below, you look up into a great shout of praise. Here are hundreds of figures, both angelic and human. The profusion is ordered, as if some mighty hymn were in progress.

 

Paul Hocking thinks that it is a representation of the Te Deum Laudamus: We praise thee, O God, we acknowledge thee to be the Lord... To thee all Angels cry aloud, the Heavens, and all the Powers therein. To thee Cherubim and Seraphim continually do cry Holy Holy Holy Lord God of Sabaoth... The glorious company of the Apostles praise thee, the goodly fellowship of the Prophets praise thee, the noble army of Martyrs praise thee...

 

I know this, because he told me so. I was busy photographing bench ends when this very enthusiastic American bounced in with another visitor, and gave him a whistlestop tour of the church, describing the details with great knowledge and understanding. Solicitously, he talked to me afterwards about what I was doing, and asked me if I'd met the Rector of Woolpit yet. I said that I went out of my way to avoid Rectors wherever possible. He laughed, and replied that, on this occasion, I'd failed, because he was, in fact, the Rector.

 

After I'd coughed miserably, and he'd laughed again, we had a long chat, uncovering a few mutual aquaintances. He described the roof, which he has obviously spent a lot of time exploring. He pointed out the way the wall posts contained Saints, some with apostolic symbols, some with books, and some with martyr's palms. There are angels on the hammerbeams above, and bearing symbols below. John Blatchly counted 128 angels alone. Some of the shields have letters on them. Are they an acrostic, as on the east chancel wall at Blythburgh? Do they indicate individual Saints? The great Henry Ringham completely restored this roof in 1862, but Mortlock thinks that one of the angels is not his, and I agree - you'll find it in the south west corner. Paul Hocking argues that the restoration was nowhere near as complete as has been made out, and that many features are original.

 

Henry Ringham also restored the range of bench ends, by duplicating some of the medieval ones, as he did at Great Bealings and Tuddenham St Martin. All are rendered with his customary skill. If Ringham did restore this roof, then the imagery must have been destroyed at some point. One instinctively thinks of William Dowsing, the Puritan inspector of the churches of Cambridgeshire and Suffolk, who progressed across the counties during the course of 1644. His delight in the destruction of angel roofs was matched only by that at the destruction of stained glass.

 

And Dowsing did visit this church. He arrived here in the afternoon of February 29th 1644. It was a Thursday, and he had come here across country from Helmingham, where he had found much to do. He also planned to visit Beyton that day, but in the end stayed overnight at the Bull hotel, and inspected All Saints there in the morning. He then rested for the weekend - the following week, he had a busy tour of southern Cambridgeshire ahead of him.

 

Dowsing records in great detail what he found to do at each church. In the case of Woolpit, the angel roof is the Dog That Didn't Bark: My Deputy. 80 superstitious pictures; some he brake down, and the rest he gave order to take down; and three crosses to be taken down in 20 days. 8s 6d. There are only two possible reasons why Dowsing doesn't mention the roof. Either he didn't notice it (extremely unlikely) or it had already been destroyed. This second option seems certain; mid-Suffolk was a strongly protestant area, and nearby Rougham, which clearly had a similar roof, was not visited by Dowsing, but was vandalised even more comprehensively than Woolpit. Most likely, the destruction at both churches dated from a hundred years earlier, although it is possible that the Rougham and Woolpit congregations had been puritan enough in the 1630s to do it to their own churches themselves.

 

Beneath the roof, the church is broad, its two aisles giving room for the panoply of medieval liturgical processions. At the east end of the south aisle was once the shrine of Our Lady of Woolpit, a site of medieval pilgrimage in connection with a nearby holy well. Apart from the front rows, many of the benches appear to be in their original positions. Some of the bench ends are 15th century, others are Ringham's 19th century copies. I wandered around the medieval bench ends, running my hands over them, crouching down and engaging them, face to face. For anyone educated in a Marxist or Weberian historical tradition, as most of my generation were, interpreting the less-obviously liturgical or theological features of a medieval church is fraught with difficulties. One possibility is to do a Cautley, and try not to interpret them at all. But it is more fun to try to do so, don't you think?

 

The bench ends of Woolpit are remarkable for their abundance. They are not representations of sacraments, virtues and vices as at Tannington and elsewhere, or Saints as at Ufford and Athelington. They are almost all non-allegorical animals, although not the art objects we find at Stowlangtoft, or the mysterious beasts of Lakenheath. Perhaps a good comparison is the similar body of work at nearby Combs. Indeed, although they do not appear to be from the same workshop, it is likely that their creators knew of each others' work. There are dogs, with geese hanging from their mouths, and another which may be a cat with a rat or lizard. There are lions and bears, and a chained monkey, and birds in profusion. So who did them, and why are they here?

 

There is one school of thought that says that they are simply there to beautify the church, and that they were made by local craftsmen doing what they were best at. If they could do lions, they did lions. If they could render a decent rabbit, then that is what they did. And so on.

 

But I think that there is rather more to it than that. On my journey down through France, I had spent an afternoon in one of my favourite towns, Autun, in Burgundy. One of the reasons I like Autun is its 11th century Cathedral of St-Lazaire; this is Lazurus, raised by Christ from the dead, and until the 18th century his relics were venerated at a shrine here. St-Lazaire is most famous for its great tympanum above the west door, generally recognised as one of the greatest Romanesque art treasures in the world, and with International Heritage status. It was created during the middle years of the 12th century, and shows the Last Judgement. To emphasise Christ's majesty over all the world, it features all manner of beasts, domestic, wild and mythical.

 

Throughout the Cathedral, animals infest the famous capitals, which tell the Gospel story. Abbe Denis Grivot, in his Un Bestiaire de la Cathedrale D'Autun (Lyon, 1973) argues that the 12th century creators of all this filled it with animals to echo the final verse of the 150th Psalm, the crowning point of that great sequence of hymns of praise: Let everything that hath breath praise the Lord!

 

Standing in the nave at Autun, I instantly recalled Paul Hocking's words about the roof at Woolpit, when he said he thought it was a representation of the Te Deum Laudamus. The Te Deum is one of the canticles; another is the Benedicite, traditionally sung through Lent: Oh all ye Works of the Lord, bless ye the Lord; praise him and magnify him for ever... O ye whales, and all that move in the Waters, bless ye the Lord... O all ye Fowls of the air, bless ye the Lord... O all ye beasts and Cattle, bless ye the Lord: praise him, and magnify him for ever!

 

Could it be that the bench ends at Woolpit, and elsewhere in Suffolk, were intended to reflect and represent the praise defined in the canticles and psalms? Both would have been central to the liturgy of the medieval Catholic church. Perhaps the bench ends of Woolpit are liturgical and theological after all.

 

How would a carpenter, or group of carpenters, go about creating a set of benches like the ones at Woolpit? Who were they? Almost certainly, they were locals. They might have been itinerant jobbing carpenters, but I don't think so. The bench ends at adjacent Tostock are clearly by the same hand. But those at nearby Stowlangtoft and Norton are not, and a third hand seems to be responsible for those at Combs, as I previously mentioned. I do not think that the mutilated ones at Rougham and Elmswell are either; they were probably from the same workshop as each other.

 

So, we have a conscious attempt by skilled members of a community to create a hymn of praise in carved oak, by representing as many beasts as they felt capable of making. Where did they get their ideas from? They would have had no problems with oxen, cocks, conies - these were all around them, in their daily lives. The person who carved the hunting dog here was very familiar with it. Perhaps it was his own. What about monkeys and lions? These are more problematic. In medieval bestiaries, exotic creatures had fabulous legends attached to them, which gave them a theological symbolism.

 

But this symbolism doesn't usually seem intended when we see them on bench ends. Sometimes they are rendered accurately, but more often wild animals are fairly imaginary; I think particularly of Barningham's camel, and Hadleigh's wolf. It isn't enough to say that the carvers could have seen pictures of exotic beasts. This is fairly unlikely. Probably, the ordinary people of Woolpit never saw a book other than the missals, lectionaries and hagiographies used in church.

 

They might have seen pictures of lions and monkeys in wall paintings, either in other churches or here at Woolpit. They might have seen them carved in bench ends, for the same reason. In fact, the representation of wild animals varies so much as to suggest that this is not the case - compare, for example, the lions of Combs with those of Stowlangtoft. Probably, they were created in the imagination from descriptions and attributes in stories. But I think that there is a strong possibility that the woodcarvers of Woolpit did see lions and monkeys in real life.

 

Here in Catholic Southern Europe, there are many remote small towns which, by virtue of being so very far from each other, take on a rich and complex life of their own. Even small villages have their shops, their craftsmen, their tradespeople; they replicate a situation that existed in Suffolk until well into the 19th century, and in some cases beyond, before the great industrialisation and easy transport swept it away. Further, there are traditions here still that we have lost. Whenever I come here, I am fascinated by the itinerant entertainers, who move from village to village, giving a single performance befre moving on. This must also once have been true of England. The thing that fascinates me most is the multitude of small family circuses.

 

Many of them seem to be of Italian or Romany origin; all family members have multiple roles, from the oldest grandparent to the youngest child, selling tickets, doing acrobatics, being the straight men to the clown (who is typically Grandpa). They all put up the tent before the performance, and take it down afterwards. They move on, through the remote hills of Provence and the Languedoc, performing on village greens, wastegrounds, the corners of fields, even traffic islands.

 

As I say, I am fascinated, and can rarely resist them, even though I am shocked, even appalled, by the easy cruelty to animals. Performing animals are still often chosen for their curiosity value, if you can call running around in a circle to the crack of a whip 'performing', poor things.

 

The choices are strange indeed; camels and zebras often feature; I have seen an old bear on a chain, and at one circus in remote Languedoc a hippopotamus of all things - it caught bread thrown by the crowd. There was no safety fence between the seats and the ring, no Health and Safety Executive to penetrate these lost valleys. I do not know if such circuses existed in medieval Suffolk. But I think that they probably did. Suffolk is a maritime county, and exotic animals were widely known and exhibited in medieval Europe. Before the Protestant Reformation cut us of from the mainland, clerics and merchants thought of themselves as European, and travelled widely - English sovereignty was a hazy concept at best, and 'Britishness' was still centuries away from being formulated as an idea. People owed allegiance to their village, their parish, and their lord, not to the Crown and Parliament in London.

 

Were the woodcarvers of Woolpit and Tostock remembering this? A circus visit, perhaps back in their childhood? Exotic animals rendered inaccurately, to be sure, but with an enthusiastic nostalgia for that exciting moment in their lives? Was there a lion? A monkey, or a bear? How much more powerful if they also knew the fabulous legends about the beasts - and had seen them in real life!

 

Some of the carvings at Woolpit are allegorical. One shows a monkey dressed in monk's robes. This, I think, is a joke at the expense of the itinerant friars who went from parish to parish, preaching repentance in the streets. They were sanctioned by the Pope, but were beyond the jurisdiction of the local Bishop. They didn't always go down well with the local Priest and congregation, who considered the Friars nosey and hypocritical. A monkey is often a symbol of foolish vanity - hence, a Friar thinking he was better than anyone else. What better way to make the point than to slip him in as one of the creatures praising the Lord?

 

How did they survive? But why should they have been destroyed? We make the mistake of thinking of the Puritans as vandals. But the more you read about William Dowsing, the more he emerges as being a principled, conservative kind of chap, despite his clearly flawed and fundamentalist theological opinions. He had no reason to destroy animal bench ends. They weren't superstitious - even Dowsing didn't think Catholics worshipped animals. If he didn't think they were meant to represent the canticles, he wouldn't even have considered them religious. Amen to that.

 

So much for the 17th century. What about the 19th? St Mary is one of the most enthusiastically restored of Suffolk's churches, despite its survivng medieval detail. But it was done well. Mortlock thought that the 19th century pulpit was the work of Ringham - but the brass lectern is pre-Reformation, a fine example. The rood screen dado panels have sentimental 19th century Saints on them, that may or may not duplicate what was there before. They are actually very good, particularly the gorgeous Mary of Magdala. They have their names painted on the cross beams for the less hagiologically articulate Victorians - from left to right across the aisle they are Saints Barbara, Felix, Mary of Magdala, Peter, Paul, Mary, Edmund and Etheldreda. It is unlikely that Saint Felix would have been on a medieval roodscreen, and Mary almost certainly wasn't - it would have relegated her to a position of no more importance than the others. If it reflects anything of what was there before, it was probably St Anne with the infant Virgin.

 

The top part of the screen was renewed in 1750, and dated so. The gates are probably a Laudian imposition of 120 years earlier, as at Kedington. This may suggest that, by the time of Dowsing's visit, the chancel was being used for some other practical purpose. Above, high above, set in the east nave wall over the chancel arch, is one of the wierdest objects I've seen in a medieval church. It was installed in the 1870s, and is clearly meant to echo the coving of a rood loft. Goodness knows what it actually is, but it is painted in garish colours, and inscribed with texts. In one of those moments where Cautley and credibility part company, he describes anyone who doesn't think it is a genuine medieval canopy of honour as 'stupid'. I suppose that it has a certain curiosity value.

 

The three-light window above it would have given light to the rood. The east window contains one of Suffolk's best modern Madonna and child images which was made by the artist Ian Keen for the King workshop in the early 1960s. Ian Keen was also responsible for the beautiful St Margaret in St Margaret's church in Norwich, and for the memorable window of St Francis with a labrador at Somerleyton near Lowestoft.

 

I turned back westwards, past a superb medieval bench end of the three Marys. This is a delight, and you'd travel to London to see it if it was in the V&A. Mary the mother of Jesus, Mary the mother of James and Mary of Magdala huddle together, perhaps on the morning of the Resurrection. One of them has a lily of the Annunciation. One head is destroyed - but was it vandalised? Or is it the result of carelessness, the wear and tear of the centuries? Would 17th century puritans have destroyed it if they'd seen it?

 

Dowsing rarely mentions bench ends, so perhaps few were left by then anyway. So how could it possibly have survived the violent zeal of the 16th century Protestants, battering the Church of England into existence with their axes, pikes and bonfires? How, even after the 1540 edict of Edward VI which ordered the destruction of all statues and images of Saints, especially those of the Blessed Virgin Mary, is it still there at all?

Still more questions than answers, I suppose. I dived beneath the water, and there was beneath me a restless current, shifting and reshifting the silver sand into unique patterns, the work of millennia, still changing, never the same.

 

- le Rayol Canadel, Cote d'Azur, August 2001.

 

www.suffolkchurches.co.uk/woolpit.htm

More Info: www.agamudayarotrumai.com/1102 ஊமைத்துரைக்கு மருதுபாண்டியர்கள் அடைக்கலம் கொடுத்த சங்கரபதிக் கோட்டை தாங்கி நிற்கும் வீரவரலாறு Asyelem to Oomaithurai given by Maruthupandiyar The sankrapathi Fort Website: www.agamudayarotrumai.com/1102

One is born from a woman, ends up in Earth.

 

Hinduism accords the respect these deserve.

 

A woman is called Gruha Lakshmi, one who brings Prosperity to Home.

 

Tamil calls her Illal, one who owns/rules the Home.

 

Similarly Earth is given the respect it deserves for it supports from Birth to Death.

 

Earth is eulogized as Mother and there are Vedic Sukthas in praise of the Earth, Bho Suktham.

 

There is Neela Suktham, Neela is considered to be the consort of Lord Vishnu.

 

Such being the case, there is no wonder in Hinduism calling the Sanctum Sanctorum of a Temple as Garbha Gruha, Gharbha meaning The Womb and Gruha, the Home.

 

Tamil calls The Gharbhagriha as Karuvarai, meaning ‘where the Foetus stays’

 

One’s first Home is the womb.

A Hindu temple consists of an inner sanctum, thegarbha griha or womb-chamber, where the primary idol or deity is housed along with Purusa. The garbhagriha is crowned by a tower-like Shikhara, also called the Vimana. The architecture includes an ambulatory for parikrama(circumambulation), a congregation hall, and sometimes an antechamber and porch.

 

The Hindu temple architecture reflects a synthesis of arts, the ideals of dharma, beliefs, values and the way of life cherished under Hinduism. It is a link between man, deities, and the Universal Purusa in a sacred space.

 

In ancient Indian texts, a temple is a place for Tirtha – pilgrimage.It is a sacred site whose ambience and design attempts to symbolically condense the ideal tenets of Hindu way of life. All the cosmic elements that create and celebrate life in Hindu pantheon, are present in a Hindu temple – from fire to water, from images of nature to deities, from the feminine to the masculine, from kama to artha, from the fleeting sounds and incense smells to Purusha – the eternal nothingness yet universality – is part of a Hindu temple architecture.

Garbhagriha or Garbha gruha (garbha gṛha) (Sanskrit: गर्भगॄह) is the sanctum sanctorum, the innermost sanctum of a Hindu templewhere resides the murti (idol or icon) of the primary deity of the temple. Literally the word means “womb chamber”, from the Sanskritwords garbha for womb and griha for house. Only ‘priests’ (pujari) are allowed to enter this chamber.

 

Although the term is often associated with Hindu temples, it is also found in Jain and Buddhist temples…

 

In temples with a spire or vimana, this chamber is placed directly underneath it, and the two of them form the main vertical axis of the temple. These together may be understood to represent the axis of the world through Mount Meru. The garbha griham is usually also on the main horizontal axis of the temple which generally is an east-west axis. In those temples where there is also a cross-axis, the garbha gṛha is generally at their intersection.

 

Generally the garbhagriha is a windowless and sparsely lit chamber, intentionally created thus to focus the devotee’s mind on the tangible form of the divine within it. Entrance to the garbha grha may be restricted to priests who perform the services there…

 

In the Dravida style, the garbhagriha took the form of a miniature vimana with other features exclusive to southern Indian temple architecture such as the inner wall together with the outer wall creating a pradakshina around the garbhagriha. The entrance is highly decorated. The inner garbhagriha or shrine became a separate structure, more elaborately adorned over time.

 

More often garbhagriha is square and sits on a plinth, its location calculated to be a point of total equilibrium and harmony as it is representative of a microcosm of the Universe. In the centre is placed the image of the deity.

 

But sometimes, for the temples of feminine deities, the garbagriha is rectangular. For example in the temple of Varahi Deula in Chaurasi.

 

The present structure of most of these temples is a two-storeyed vimana with a square garbhagriha and a surrounding circumambulatory path, an ardha-mandapa and a narrower maha-mandapa.

 

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garbhagriha

 

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindu_temple_architecture

 

Natarja , Chidambaram Plan Image Credit. natarjatemplechidambaram.blogspot.in/

 

Any given Sunday Paseo de la reforma Mexico City

  

If you like this shot please go see my ALBUM "Any given Sunday in Mexico City"

 

www.flickr.com/photos/luajr/albums/72157638501177336

 

Or "street Shots"

www.flickr.com/photos/luajr/albums/72177720295921392

Rather ironic to see a First Group bus advertising South West Trains, given the franchise change to be effected in August 2017!

Given to me this morning by a cow-orker who no longer wanted it. Silver and mother of pearl, with a snakes' head detail.

Given the concerns over Covid-19 and the associated international response, social pressure referred to as ‘Social Distancing’, the good Mr T decided it was time to chill and hang out in the pool on the Southern Shores of Lake Ontario in tropical Grimsby, Ontario, for the duration of March Break. Some of the online paranoia suggested he may never get another chance. So grasp life by the horns and enjoy it while you can. Suitably protected from the sun by a cool set of sun glasses, a glass of wine to help take the edge off, and a good book to pass the time, Mr T reclined in the pool and settled in for the duration. - JW

 

Date Taken: 2020-03-17

 

Tech Details:

 

Taken using a tripod-mounted Nikon D800 fitted with an AF-S Nikkor 24-120mm 1:4.0 lense set to 28mm, ISO100, Auto WB, Aperture Priority Mode, f/9.0, 1/3 sec. PP in free Open Source RAWTherapee from Nikon RAW/NEF source file: convert image to B&W/monochrome using green channel gamma adjustment to somewhat darken the image, crop image to 1:1 aspect ratio, set final image size to 7000 px wide, apply Tone Mapping at default levels, boost contrast in L-A-B mode, enable Shadows/Highlights and recover highlight detail, sharpen, save. PP in free Open Source GIMP: use the levels tool in Auto mode to establish a good base overall tonality, sharpen, save, scale image to 6000px wide, sharpen, save, add fine black-and-white frame, add bar and text on left, save, scale image to 2048 px wide for posting online, sharpen very slightly, save.

Given time I'll be back to i.d. this flick. If you see something you want to I.D., please feel free to leave it in the comments or just tag the flick.

Old door locks found in the old art deco bath house at Jacob Riis Park in the Rockaways, NYC. Natural light; no filter!

Given the size of this juvenile bald eagle, I have assumed this is a female.

Students have given apples to their teachers on the first day of school for over a century. But exactly how the apple earned this distinction is not entirely clear.

 

The most common explanation is that in the 16th through 18th centuries in Denmark, Sweden and the US, poorer farming folk would pay their children's teachers with food - most notably with common and plentiful apples and potatoes. Another is that farmers gave teachers this food to supplement the teachers' low incomes; as teachers' wages went up, the amount of food went down. Eventually, students brought in that one apple out of tradition more than anything else.

 

Another consideration is that in the retelling of the story of Adam and Eve. Eve is said to have eaten an apple from the Tree of Knowledge. The apple is not actually mentioned in the book of Genesis; only "the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge." Regardless, the apple story stuck. Since teachers offer knowledge to their students, the apple -as the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge — makes the perfect symbol.

 

Some people point out that when young children learn the alphabet, each letter is associated with a word they already know: A is for Apple, B is for Ball, and so on. So the apple is a symbol of the letter A, which is also the grade that most students want. So perhaps some students came to the conclusion that if they gave their teachers an A at the beginning of the school year, the teachers might return the favour and give them an A at the end of the year.

 

Read more: www.cliffsnotes.com/Section/Giving-Your-Teacher-an-Apple....

Cristina Alonzo was given up for adoption after birth, lived in foster care for much of her life, and has lived on the streets the rest of it.

 

She had been pregnant once before, but she lost the baby to social services. She is pregnant again. A week ago, she was sleeping in back of a Mobile Station in the freezing January cold because she could not get housing.

 

Now she is in temporary housing in the Budget Motel in Liberty NY, waiting for emergency housing. Her boyfriend and alleged father of her child is with her much of the time.

 

Photographer Les Stone donates his time to capture the spirit of homeless teens for the Do1Thing project. do1thing.org.

 

It is the goal of Do1Thing to empower homeless youth to move themselves from homelessness to a permanent housing. Empowerment comes by outfitting the teens with training, items and supplies needed to overcome their current situations move forward.

 

We partner with Covenant House International, the largest privately-funded agency in the Americas providing shelter and other services to homeless, runaway and throwaway youth. Our second partner is StandUp for Kids. The mission of StandUp for Kids is to help homeless and street kids.

 

They do this, every day, in cities across America, carrying out their mission through volunteers who go to the streets in order to find, stabilize and otherwise help homeless and street kids improve their lives.

 

Do1Thing is a project of the Heart Gallery of New Jersey, Inc. is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization supported by the generous contributions of individuals, corporations and foundations.

www.heartgallerynj.org

 

[photographer='LES STONE']

  

Rudolf Stingel conceived this exhibition especially for Palazzo Grassi. Given the utmost freedom of execution, Stingel has completely transformed the museum, filling the entire space with an oriental carpet. Moving beyond the idea of two-dimensionality that is conventionally associated with painting, the exhibition aims to subvert the usual spatial relationship between a painting and viewer.

 

The carpet evokes the thousand-year history of Venice, the ‘Most Serene Republic’, but also recalls the Middle-European culture so loved by the artist; for example, we are reminded of Sigmund Freud’s early twentieth-century Viennese study. This reference undoubtedly provides a key to interpreting this installation: on entering the ‘labyrinth’, an all-encompassing feeling and sensorial experience transport us towards the transcendence of the Ego, by means of its removal and its ghosts. The nearly thirty paintings exhibited suggest presences that are ‘buried’ in memory, and removed experiences that thrive again. The architectural space becomes an introspective and projective space, silent and welcoming, suitable for meditation: but Stingel’s work alters our visual and spatial perception of it, suggesting a new, rarified and suspenseful atmosphere in which the silver, white and black of the paintings stands out like so many other ‘openings’ on Venice, in an another dimension.

From the Palazzo Grassi website

Given the long history of shipping, exploration and trade of the city of Bristol this fine sculpture seemed very appropriate!

Wiki has the following detail:

Brycgstow (Old English "the place at the bridge") was founded by 1000; by about 1020, it was a trading centre with a mint producing silver pennies bearing its name. By 1067 Brycgstow was a well-fortified burh, and that year the townsmen beat off a raiding party from Ireland led by three of Harold Godwinson's sons. Under Norman rule, the town had one of the strongest castles in southern England. Bristol was the place of exile for Diarmait Mac Murchada, the Irish king of Leinster, after being overthrown. The Bristol merchants subsequently played a prominent role in funding Richard Strongbow de Clare and the Norman invasion of Ireland.

Black and white etching showing the towers of St Stephen's Church, St Augustine the Less Church and Bristol Cathedral, published c.1850

 

The port developed in the 11th century around the confluence of the Rivers Frome and Avon, adjacent to Bristol Bridge just outside the town walls. By the 12th century Bristol was an important port, handling much of England's trade with Ireland, including slaves. The stone bridge built in 1247 was replaced by the current bridge during the 1760s. The town incorporated neighbouring suburbs and became a county in 1373, the first town in England to be given this status. During this period, Bristol became a shipbuilding and manufacturing centre. By the 14th century Bristol, York and Norwich were England's largest medieval towns after London. One-third to one-half the population died in the Black Death of 1348–49, which checked population growth, and its population remained between 10,000 and 12,000 for most of the 15th and 16th centuries.

photographer's description: "Bicycle taxi."

 

These photos belong to the IIT Downtown Campus Library as part of the Library of International Relations Collection.

 

The photos were taken by a member of the U.S. Marines who was in Japan in the fall of 1945, shortly after the end of World War II. At this point we do not have the name of the photographer and we do not know how these photos were given to the library. There are 100 photos in this collection.

Surprisingly easy given such a long lens..

Given a overlay

www.redbubble.com/people/slysweeny</a</</

See the "Performing Martha Graham at Eugene Lang College" video

 

Performing Martha Graham at Eugene Lang CollegeIn 2006, a group of Lang students were given a remarkable opportunity: to dance under the direction of Yuriko Kikuchi, former soloist and rehearsal director for Martha Graham. In this rehearsal, Yuriko helps students understand the emotions as well as the complex choreography of Steps in the Street, an excerpt from Martha Grahams work Chronicle, which premiered in 1936. In addition to rehearsing with Yuriko, students studied the Martha Graham technique and influences on Grahams work with Ellen Graff, director of programs at the Martha Graham School of Contemporary Dance. Steps in the Street was performed in the 2006 Lang Spring Dance Concert.Will the Real Spacemonkey Please Stand Up? A film by Eric Hopper, Media StudiesIn your dreams, you are a rocketboy in search of your errant spacemonkey. You wake to find him right next to you in bed, so your mission is accomplished. Or is it? Eric Hopper, a media studies alu

mnus who directed the film, enlisted his son Jack as both narrator and protagonist of this animated short, a creepy dream-versus-reality vignette set against the backdrop of outer space, complete with NASA countdown overdubs and spliced vintage footage of space launches. In the sequel, Nobodys Monkey, the story is retold from the monkeys point of view. He complains that he is just an object, something the rocketboy likes to jerk around, not his real friend. He wants to be left alone, he wants to be free. But still the monkey asks: Is this real, or am I dreaming?The Image Maker: A Life Devoted to What Looks Good. A film by Helen Pearson, Media StudiesDecades ago, Connie De Nave, a no-nonsense Brooklyn native, was a press agent who helped package the Beatles and the Rolling Stones for a mass audience, creating the signature look of tousled glamour made famous in photo spreads and on album covers. The company she founded, the Image Makers, secured privileged spots for her

acts in the annals of rock. This 2005 film by Helen Pearson, a media studies alumna, is an engaging portrait of this intriguing woman in more recent years. Connie became a costume and antique jewelry sellera jewel diva living a quieter but still rocking life.A Stickball Game Grows in Brooklyn. A film by Media Studies alumniIn South Park Slope, stickball is a cherished tradition. This neighborhood which is slowly being gentrified is home to men who have gone to bat on the same block12th Street and Third Avenuefor decades. This captivating black-and-white film, shot in late summer 2006 by media studies alumni Ted Fisher, Iris Lee, and Maya Mumma, offers an intimate portrait of the game and the unique brotherhood it forges among the players.Together We Win: The Fight to Organize StarbucksLabor organizers have always used rallying cries to mobilize workers and win support for union campaigns. Think of the AFL-CIO's slogan from the people who brought you the weekend.

Starbucks organizers, whose efforts are sympathetically chronicled by media studies alumna Diane Krauthamer in this 2006 film, have updated the slogan to from the people who brought you better pay and more hours. Several baristas from New York City describe their fight against mandatory part-time schedules, workplace discrimination, poverty wages, and inadequate healthcare coverage, a battle they ultimately won.The New Face of ParsonsTake a virtual tour of the Sheila C. Johnson Design Center, designed by Lyn Rice Architects, which is set to open in 2008. Funded in part by a $7 million donation from philanthropist and New School trustee Sheila C. Johnson, the 25,000-square-foot complex will create a new public face for the school at the corner of Fifth Avenue and 13th Street. The center will house an innovative urban quad, state-of-the-art galleries, lecture and meeting spaces, a design store, and the Anna-Maria and Stephen Kellen Archives, an important collection d

ocumenting 20th-century design.A Conversation with Bob Kerrey, Part 1New School President Bob Kerrey talks to three students from different departments of the university about their academic interests and discusses prospects for collaboration between departments. Nada Abshir studied at the graduate program in International Affairs and wrote her thesis on the use of hip-hop by youth in urban Africa as a tool to promote urban development. Kate Emerman studied voice in the Bachelor of Music program at Mannes and is currently pursuing her masters degree in vocal performance there. Lee Clayton studied product design and design technology at Parsons The New School for Design.A Conversation with Bob Kerrey, Part 2President Kerrey continues his discussion of the challenges and possibilities of interdisciplinary collaboration at The New School with three students from different departments. Nicole Pontes studied sociology in the PhD program at The New School for Social Research. G

ordon Burke studied in the Science, Technology, and Society and Urban Studies programs at Lang, and did research on Type II diabetes in New York City. Carolina Cruz Santiago studied documentary film in the Media Studies department; the first film she directed, Aloha New York, debuted at the 2007 Tribeca Film Festival.Big Ideas, Big Gifts, Big ImpactMilano The New School for Management and Urban Planning hosts its second panel discussion on philanthropy, Big Ideas, Big Gifts, Big Impact: A Conversation with Today's Philanthropists. The panel features Agnes Gund, founder of the Studio in a School Association and president emerita of the Museum of Modern Art; George Soros, chairman of Soros Fund Management; Evelyn Lauder, senior corporate vice president of The Estee Lauder Companies Inc. and founder and chairman of The Breast Cancer Research Foundation; and Alphonse Buddy Fletcher, Jr., chairman and CEO of Fletcher Asset Management, Inc. The four panelists, representing an arra

y of philanthropic endeavors, discuss the motivation for giving and accountability in nonprofit organizations.The Constitution in CrisisIn the third lecture of a four-part series, Elaine Scarry, Walter M. Cabot Professor of Aesthetics and the General Theory of Value at Harvard University, speaks on the U.S. Constitution in relation to war and the social contract. The series, The Constitution in Crisis, is moderated by Sam Haselby, visiting professor, and cosponsored by the Leonard and Louise Riggio Writing and Democracy Program, The New School Writing Program, and Eugene Lang College The New School for Liberal Arts, is designed to deepen public understanding of this charter document of the United States. Three of the country's leading scholars of law, history, and literature and an outstanding human rights activist will address the topic.Jazz MattersJazz Matters is a series hosted by The New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music and moderated by Howard Mandel (Down Beat, Na

tional Public Radio, New York University). Here a panel consisting of pianist Robert Glasper, Revive Da Live producer Meghan Stabile, and author, journalist, and guitarist Greg Tate discuss the interplay between hip-hop, jazz, and Black rock.Illustration TodayIllustration today is at a crossroads: Traditional forms of editorial illustration are being reinvented or giving way to new modes of expression. In this symposium, presented by Parsons The New School for Design and the Department of Illustration, more than two- dozen leading practitioners engage in spirited discussions on a range of topics. Steven Guarnaccia, Parsons Illustration Department Chair and former New York Times art director, and Dan Nadel, Parsons Illustration Department assistant professor and publisher of The Ganzfeld, moderate.Freedom Next Time: An Evening with John Pilger and Amy GoodmanAward-winning journalist and filmmaker John Pilger, author of Freedom Next Time: Resisting the Empire, and Amy Goodman,

host of the Pacifica radio show Democracy Now! and author of Static: Government Liars, Media Cheerleaders and the People Who Fight Back, discuss peoples struggles for freedom in such places as Iraq, Palestine, South Africa, and Diego Garcia, where the dream of independence has yet to be realized.Democratization and the Networked Public SphereOver the past ten years, participatory Web-based technologies have transformed the public sphere. As part of its series The Public Domain, the Vera List Center for Art and Politics at The New School presents a panel discussion on the democratizing potential of the Internet. The speakers examine the growth in political participation spurred by weblogs and wikis, which enable anyone with access to a computer to post news and commentary; the use of Web-based platforms for artistic expression; and mobile wireless devices as tools to facilitate political organizing. The discussion is moderated by media artist Trebor Scholz, and features p

anelists Danah Boyd, PhD candidate at the School of Information at the University of California in Berkeley and graduate fellow, Annenberg Center for Communication at the University of Southern California; and Ethan Zuckerman, research fellow, Berkman Center for Internet and Society, Harvard Law School.An Evening with Choreographer, Director, and Artist Ralph LemonChoreographer, director, and multimedia artist Ralph Lemon, visiting artist at Eugene Lang The New School for Liberal Arts, discusses his creative process and recent interdisciplinary work, including Practice of Form, his series of student workshops at Lang. He also discusses his first solo exhibition (the efflorescence of) Walter, a series of drawings, paintings, and video works that explore the themes of memory and transcendence.An Evening with Playwright John Patrick ShanleyJohn Patrick Shanley, author of the plays Doubt and Four Dogs and a Bone and the screenplay for Moonstruck, speaks with New School for Drama

director Robert LuPone about his development as a playwright and his experience directing his own work. Shanley received the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the 2005 Tony Award for Best Play for Doubt, and was the distinguished artist in residence at The New School for Drama for the 2006-07 school year.Sustainability and Environmental JusticeMajora Carter, executive director and founder of Sustainable South Bronx (SSB) and MacArthur Fellow, discusses sustainability and environmental justice at the annual Michael Kalil Lecture on Natural and Technological Systems, sponsored by The Michael Kalil Endowment for Smart Design in the Department of Architecture, Interior Design, and Lighting at Parsons The New School for Design, and the Tishman Environment and Design Center at The New School.This video was originally shared on blip.tv by thenew_school with a No license

(All rights reserved) license.

This was a catalog given to store managers, a vendor catalog, with manufacturing numbers so they could order items to sell. All items in this catalog should have a packaging date of 1996. Remember these are like "production" or "prototype" information so the actual dolls and fashions sold in store might be slightly different have different colors, etc. This is especially true for the cheaper items and playsets. special editions and store exclusives won't be included here. Items in this catalog include Hula Hair Barbie, Angel Princess Barbie, Splash N Color Barbie, Great Date Ken, Flower Fun Barbie, Prince Ken, Rapunzel Barbie. Big Brother Ken, Potty Training Kelly, Lil Friends of Kelly Cool Fun Kelly, Teen Skipper, Clueless dolls and Fashions Fashion Avenue Boutique. There may be some fashions and playsets produced directly by ARCO Toys company that are not included in this catalog. If you found this usefull please stop by BarbieReference.com and click an ad to support the site. More pages from this catalog are only available on BarbieReference.com

I was given a sheet of magazine scraps which had been applied to a background in a haphazard manner and was asked to use this as a source of inspiration!

I find this sort of challenge VERY difficult as I usually work to an idea, not an image.

After a mild panic I decided to gesso the whole page in an attempt to tone down the images and then I used it to create a folder which I then die cut and embossed.

I then grabbed the scrap bag and started to machine embroider images which started to leap from the page.

This is one sample.

This was a catalog given to store managers, a vendor catalog, with manufacturing numbers so they could order items to sell. All items in this catalog should have a packaging date of 1996. Remember these are like "production" or "prototype" information so the actual dolls and fashions sold in store might be slightly different have different colors, etc. This is especially true for the cheaper items and playsets. special editions and store exclusives won't be included here. Items in this catalog include Hula Hair Barbie, Angel Princess Barbie, Splash N Color Barbie, Great Date Ken, Flower Fun Barbie, Prince Ken, Rapunzel Barbie. Big Brother Ken, Potty Training Kelly, Lil Friends of Kelly Cool Fun Kelly, Teen Skipper, Clueless dolls and Fashions Fashion Avenue Boutique. There may be some fashions and playsets produced directly by ARCO Toys company that are not included in this catalog. If you found this usefull please stop by BarbieReference.com and click an ad to support the site. More pages from this catalog are only available on BarbieReference.com 1997 Mattel Catalog

This photo was given to me by a photographer who took photos for Newspapers and Magazines, and when I find her name, I will attribute it to her. I think her first name was Helga or similar.

 

Updating and adjusting photo as I go along.

 

The motorbike is a Z1300 Kawasaki A5, non fuel injected, the sidecar was DJP sidecar, made by David Pearce from warrigul, coincidentally, his factory was in Perse Street, different spelling of course, but a little quirky anyway.

 

I strengthened it by grounding off the black powder coat putting ropes along it and fiberglassing over them, I did the same inside, it give it the strength to withstand damage during accidents, etc.

 

The extra fuel tank in the middle is out of a Mazda car, as is the fuel pump I used. I could supply fuel to the engine, or to the engine and motorbike tank at the same time. The motor bike tank held app 27 Litres and the Mazda tank held app 40 litres.

 

The reason I used a Mazda tank is as you can see, it fits in the brackets between the outfit and the sidecar, basically sharing the weight between the bike & outfit.

 

I went around Australia with this outfit in record time in 1986, I took my three legged dog, Missy with me. Had a few adventures along the way, including hitting a Kangaroo at Whim Creek, about a hundred K's out of Port Headland at 100 K's plus, slaughtered the Kangaroo & Joey. Knocked out my front brakes.

 

I stupidly kept going without fixing the front brakes, all I had to do was fill up the master cylinder, bleed and tighten up the line that Kangaroo turned and drained the fluid out. I was stupidly tired, but kept driving through the night, got to Perth in the night & bogged it on a vacant block of land, so I climbed into & and went to sleep to daylight.

 

I took ages to get it back on the bitchumen & off through Perth along Highway one around the coast. Because I didn't fix the front brakes, were most of your motorcycle braking comes from, even more so in an outfit, I couldn't make it around a left hander and rolled at very high speed, rolling over near the bottom end of western australia, Bridgeport area ???

 

The poor doggy, a three legged Border Collie X Kelpie was thrown out of the sidecar and when I woke up, the bike was right way up, on it's wheels, with the key in the ignition, bentm but when I turned it, the ever reliable Z1300 roared into life.

 

I drove to a place where I stayed for the night in a hotel / motel room, my first shower and bed for a long time, but while I had a good sleep, I was sore & sorry I spent all day at a local Suzuki dealership getting it fixed, then headed off at night, dodging Kangaroos.

 

The trip was a record for one person riding an outfit, two people have done it quicker in an outfit and one person has done it in under 7 days, that's about 2,000 K's plus, every day. I did it in 14 days with a lot of trouble, no help or sponsorship.

 

Murray, Missy & Outfit c1986 - Uncropped

©All photographs on this site are copyright: ©DESPITE STRAIGHT LINES (Paul Williams) 2011 – 2021 & GETTY IMAGES ®

  

No license is given nor granted in respect of the use of any copyrighted material on this site other than with the express written agreement of ©DESPITE STRAIGHT LINES (Paul Williams). No image may be used as source material for paintings, drawings, sculptures, or any other art form without permission and/or compensation to ©DESPITE STRAIGHT LINES (Paul Williams)

 

.

.

 

I would like to say a huge and heartfelt 'THANK YOU' to GETTY IMAGES, and the 48.731+ Million visitors to my FLICKR site.

  

***** Selected for sale in the GETTY IMAGES COLLECTION on Friday 26th January 2024

  

CREATIVE RF gty.im/1960117603 MOMENT ROYALTY FREE COLLECTION**

  

This photograph became my 6,758th frame to be selected for sale in the Getty Images collection and I am very grateful to them for this wonderful opportunity.

  

©DESPITE STRAIGHT LINES (Paul Williams)

  

.

.

  

Photograph taken at an altitude of Fifty three metres on Friday 29th January 2021 at 09:40am on a cold but beautiful winter morning in January of an adult Female House sparrow (Passer Domesticus) off Chessington Avenue in Bexleyheath, Kent.

 

The house sparrow is found in most parts of the world and differs from it's close relative the Tree sparrow, the female having a yellowish beak and black and grey stripe over the eye.

  

.

.

  

Nikon D850 Focal length 600mm Shutter speed: 1/640s Aperture f/6.3 iso1000 Image area FX (36 x 24) NEF RAW L (8256 x 5504). NEF RAW L (14 bit uncompressed) Image size L (8256 x 5504 FX). Focus mode AF-C focus. AF-C Priority Selection: Release. Nikon Back button focusing enabled. AF-S Priority selection: Focus. 3D Tracking watch area: Normal 55 Tracking points.AF-Area mode single point & 73 point switchable. Exposure mode: Manual exposure mode. Matrix metering. Auto ISO sensitivity: 1000 ISO White balance on: Auto1. Colour space: RGB. Actve D-lighting: Normal. Vignette control: Normal. Picture control: Auto (Sharpening A +1/Clarity A+1)

  

Sigma 60-600mm f/4.5-6.3DG OS HSM SPORTS. Lee SW150 MKI filter holder with MK2 light shield and custom made velcro fitting for the Sigma lens. Lee SW150 circular polariser glass filter.Lee SW150 Filters field pouch.Nikon GP-1 GPS module. Hoodman HEYENRG round eyepiece oversized eyecup.Mcoplus professional MB-D850 multi function battery grip 6960.Two Nikon EN-EL15a batteries (Priority to battery in Battery grip). Black Rapid sport quick release neckstrap. My Memory 128GB Class 10 SDXC 80MB/s card. Lowepro Flipside 400 AW camera bag.

     

LATITUDE: N 51d 28m 28.04s

LONGITUDE: E 0d 8m 10.35s

ALTITUDE: 51.0m

  

RAW (TIFF) FILE: 130.00MB NEF: 93.0MB

PROCESSED (JPeg) FILE: 22.80MB

     

PROCESSING POWER:

 

Nikon D850 Firmware versions C 1.20 (14/01/2021) LD Distortion Data 2.018 (18/02/20) LF 1.00

 

HP 110-352na Desktop PC with AMD Quad-Core A6-5200 APU 64Bit processor. Radeon HD8400 graphics. 8 GB DDR3 Memory with 1TB Data storage. 64-bit Windows 10. Verbatim USB 2.0 1TB desktop hard drive. WD My Passport Ultra 1tb USB3 Portable hard drive. Nikon ViewNX-1 64bit Version 1.4.1 (18/02/2020). Nikon Capture NX-D 64bit Version 1.6.2 (18/02/2020). Nikon Picture Control Utility 2 (Version 2.4.5 (18/02/2020). Nikon Transfer 2 Version 2.13.5. Adobe photoshop Elements 8 Version 8.0 64bit.

   

Remember when Evergreen's container ship blocked the Suez Canal for a week in 2021?

 

My entry for day 3 of Vignweek, the prompt being 'Nautical'.

 

#Vignweek2025

Iris - photo given a painterly look using Topaz Impressions 2 (using the Georgia O'Keeffe pre-set).

 

If you would like to see more of my photo-art, please have a look at my album ... flic.kr/s/aHskHKuNDr