when photos on Flickr

my friend T and I were road-tripping along in the approved road-tripping way (much driving, much much music, and much much much laughter) when we heard of this beach that had to be hiked to. There was no car access. Mhm, instant intrigue. So we bought a wilderness tenting pass, rented a bear canister to store our food in, and headed to Shi Shi Beach with our tent and firewood and supplies. It sounds easy. It wasn’t. We decided that the people who made the beach inaccessible by car should rot in a chocolate-less world for all eternity. (I know, intense. We get like that when we're exhausted.)

So I took photos of the sunset while T ate the hotdog we'd cooked over our mini fire, and I convinced her to come and stand by the ocean for the photo. She did. But she brought her hotdog with her, and ate it with her back to the camera. Shocking behind-the-scenes revelations

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Inspiration- I want to be like you when I grow up by Tim Constable

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Little and large. Dad in his monster truck with his kid in tow! www.picfair.com/pics/06900381-inspiration-i-want-to-be-li...

When pigs fly..... by monsterbrick

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They use jetpacks!

Montauk Lighhouse by Steve Starer

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When they talk about the east end of long island, this *is* the east end. Next stop Europe.

Drifting on the River Ouse by crafty1tutu (Ann)

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When we called into Ely in Cambridgeshire, Peter went in to a huge antique shop by the River Ouse and I wandered along the river taking photos.

Connecting People and Places2185 by Brad

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When 2185 was at East Troy Electric Railway hangers were install to allow banners to be hung from the side.

www.jtbell.net/transit/images/EastTroy/PCC.jpg

When the sun goes down by Alberto Mattiussi

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View On Black

www.albertomattiussi.com

When Gideon Cries by C. R. Strebor

when your small by Lindesey Boardman

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awakened from the dream of life by Simon Knott

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St Mary, Swardeston, Norfolk

The parish is best known as the home of early 20th Century heroine Edith Cavell. Her father was the Vicar.

A relief of Grief laying flowers before a headstone bearing the initials WD, on the headstone of Walter James Davy (1880s).

PEACE! peace! he is not dead, he doth not sleep,—

He hath awakened from the dream of life;

’Tis we who, lost in stormy visions, keep

With phantoms an unprofitable strife,

And in mad trance strike with our spirit’s knife

Invulnerable nothings. We decay

Like corpses in a charnel; fear and grief

Convulse us and consume us day by day,

And cold hopes swarm like worms within our living clay.

P B Shelley, from Adonais, 1821

In 2007, I wrote: I came here on what was just about the only gloomy day in March 2007. But Swardeston is an appropriate place to come to feeling slightly sombre, and it is a place to leave uplifted as well.

For forty-six years at the end of the 19th century and the start of the 20th century, the Vicar here was Frederick Cavell. He transformed the church and the village, and left it its greatest legacy. The first hint of this comes as you approach the church from the south. The bulky, granite war memorial is no different to a thousand others, except that the first name under the legend Pro Patria is Edith Louisa Cavell. It should be said that her name comes first simply in alphabetical order, but she was quite the most famous woman to be killed in World War One, and one of the most significant English figures of that slaughter. Her story was one of the most fondly told in the years after the War, an expression of Englishness. Indeed, a near-hysteria became associated with her legend. If the English nation hadn't embraced protestantism so firmly, then no doubt she'd be recognised as a Saint by now.

Edith's father's church is a long, tall, simple building, all under one roof and probably originally Norman. The 14th and 15th centuries saw a big rebuilding here, leaving the tower and most of the window tracery. You step into a light space; the nave windows are almost entirely clear, and there is a sense of height.

Edith Cavell's portrait hangs simply in the north-west corner. Frederick Cavell's first action on arriving in the Parish was to build a magnificent new Vicarage beside the church. It is today a private house. While the Vicarage was being built, The Cavells lived in a Georgian farmhouse nearby, and this was where Edith Cavell was born in 1865. Edith's letters reveal that her low church father was a bit of a puritan, and she would spend much of her early life wandering the parish, drawing and painting. At school, she showed a talent for languages, particularly French, and in 1890, at the age of 25, she set off for Brussels to work as a governess. Five years later, she was back in Swardeston, nursing her father through an illness, and this seems to be what set her mind to training as a nurse.

She worked in hospitals in Kent, London and Manchester, before setting off back to Brussels in 1906. She ran a training school for nurses there, but often returned to Norfolk, and it was while in the county that she heard of the German invasion of Belgium in 1914. She made her fateful decision to return to the country, and would never see England again.

From the stories, it is easy to imagine some dynamic, flighty young girl putting the world to rights, but of course Cavell was forty-eight years old when she headed back across the German Ocean. From then on, the story is well known. Her training school nursed soldiers of both sides, but she also saw it as her humanitarian duty to help hunted British soldiers escape back to England. Inevitably, she was caught, and shot by the Germans on the morning of October the 12th, 1915, a few weeks before her fiftieth birthday. Her last words would have been familiar to any English person in the first half of the 20th century: Standing as I do in view of God and eternity, I realise that Patriotism is not enough. I must have no hatred or bitterness towards anyone.

She was buried in a military cemetery, and part of the cross which marked her grave is now in a glass case in Swardeston church, like a holy relic. After the War, Cavell's body was brought back to England, and, after a funeral in Westminster Abbey, she was buried in the Cathedral close in Norwich. There is a fine, dramatic monument to her outside the National Portrait Gallery near Trafalgar Square, and a fairly awful one outside the Erpingham Gate of Norwich Cathedral. Perhaps the best memorial, though, is the east window here at Swardeston, completed before the end of the War by Ernest Heasman. In light, muted colours, Edith Cavell kneels in her nurse's uniform at the foot of the cross, accompanied by smaller, appropriate figures, including St Agnes, St Margaret and Florence Nightingale.

No doubt this church still receives many visitors brought here by Edith Cavell's story*, and you'll find it open every day. Also worth seeing are some images in continental glass, one a roundel depicting the Blessed Virgin and child with a Bishop, the other a rectangular pane depicting St Matthew.

Frederick Cavell's low church restoration has left the interior simple and fitting. There are old benches, the skeleton of a 15th century screen, and the beautiful rustic timber roof. The font is large and plain, the 17th century font cover elegant. Nothing terribly exciting, but this building retains a feel of the time of its restoration, and Edith Cavell would certainly recognise it today.

Outside, the weather was deteriorating, the gloom now punctuated by bursts of drizzle. The rooks collected miserably in the large oak to the north. But all along the path, the daffodils lifted their haughty golden heads and showed that Spring had come again.

*Since 2015 visitors can also enjoy the Cavell Rooms to the north of the church, which contain a permanent display about the life of Edith Cavell.

when selecting a guitar #2... by mike johnson

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when selecting a guitar, it is important to take care in choosing the tonewoods. make sure the guitar will blend well with your personality. will the guitar resonate with the acoustics of the room where you are playing?

www.my3wmusic.com

Malabar trogon -2 by Nitin Vyas

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when they sit still, appear hunched. The song of the male is a series of percussive 'kyau' calls. The bird is becoming rarer and sensitive to forest fragmentation.

When clouds shaped! by Khalid Almasoud

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عندما تتشكل الغيوم , لوحة الهية ... سبحان الله

من سواحل منطقة السالمية - موسم السرايات -
Seascape from Al Salimeya coasts , in Thu 6-4-2006.

Kuwait

Bubbles 2 by lordriffington

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Preeetty. You have no idea how difficult it is to get a shot like this. Particularly when you have two small children attempting to pop said bubbles.

When EVs dream... by Steve Jurvetson

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...do they imagine they will hatch from the egg of design?

Seen on Earth Day, owned by a gung-ho couple who love the real storage space when the rear seats fold down.