View allAll Photos Tagged whitewashing
Past the pillar, past the post, mail a letter, guest to host. Post a message, spin a line, stamp your foot and send a sign.
Tiny, whitewashed, and with a lop sided bellcote, St Mary's is charm itself. Diarist and clergyman Francis Kilvert, who lived a few miles away, described it as 'squatting like a stout grey owl among its seven great black yews'.
The setting is wonderful, and wild: on the banks of the infant Honddu river, with the Black Mountains to the west and the great ridge carrying Offa's Dyke (and the Wales/England border) immediately to the east. To the north is Gospel Pass, the road over the mountains to Hay on Wye.
In winter this is often unpassable because of snow, and even in summer after heavy rain the road can be slippery and difficult.
The church was built in 1762, as a chapel of ease for the church at nearby Lanigon. Inside it is a simple, very small chamber, with a stone floor, wooden seating, minute gallery, pulpit and altar.
We look for the better angels of our nature
we look in vain
speak truth
cost as it may
every seeking a narrower way
ever weak
however strong
they are most beautiful before they're gone
Whitewashed
*lilium*
Dundullimal homestead.
Not many buildings on the western plains date from before the mid 1850s but Dubbo has an amazing slab house built in the early 1840s of yellow box, ironbark and river red gum slabs. It is believed to be the oldest slab house in NSW and is now owned by the National Trust and operated as a museum of squatting life in the 1840s. The complex of buildings include the homestead, a timber church, sandstone stables built in later decades, and outbuildings. The not grand homestead is in almost original condition and is said to embody the innovation and ingenuity of the early Australian way of life. When built Dundullimal was a sheep station of 26,000 acres along the Macquarie River. The outbuildings include a blacksmith, coach room, sunken cool room, caretaker’s cottage, windmill, wells etc. Inside the homestead it was well equipped and the sitting room had imported wall paper (now reproduced), imported furniture (now all antiques) and style. The 1872 timber church was moved to Dundullimal in 2013. The original homestead was just a couple of rooms which were added to with two main wings. It has French windows and a north facing veranda. Much of the interior joinery is red cedar. Ceilings are of whitewashed cypress pine. Dundullimal was established after the 1836 government decree allowing squatting by license in these western districts. Earliest reference to it is in 1838 with the owners Charles and Dalmahoy Campbell. The run’s name means “thunderstorm”. Like many large squatting runs by 1839 it five assigned male convicts to work on the property and one female assigned convict for house duties. John Maughan took over the property in 1842. He extended the house especially after his wife arrived there in 1852. By 1855 Maughan owned considerable areas of land freehold. He sold Dundullimal in 1858. A few acres of the original property was finally granted to the National Trust from a deceased estate in 1985.
A charming blue doorway in the picturesque village of Sidi Bou Said, Tunisia. The vibrant blue paint contrasts beautifully with the whitewashed walls, reflecting the traditional architecture of this artistic haven.
Whitewashed brick building in neo-classical style, dating mainly from the 19 th century.
The castle was owned by numerous barons. The front of the castle was build around 1820.
Over time, the castle has undergone numerous restorations and transformations.
Today is a set of whimsical architecture, which gives it an original and even a little disturbing in foggy weather stamp ...
It is possible that the castle was built on the site of an ancient Roman villa.
Visited this location in December 2014
And when?
When did I think it was okay to love every shade of skin as long as it didn't resemble mine?
When?
When did I think everything I was and will be is wrapped up in this?
When did I start believing that everything I am is what they said I will be?
When did I start wishing I was anything but....
whitewash paint on vintage paper & frame & light reflecting on foil wrapping, 70x100, luckily arrived in a friend's corridor
Freshly whitewashed curbs do little to mask deficient or inexistent pedestrian sidewalks in the vicinity of Brasília's Touring Bus Station.
The tropical climate plays havoc with preservation efforts. Can't get over how vibrant green it is, really healthy! As seen at Mount Fortress, Macau
Orange door of the former whitewashed fishermen huts at Praia do Barril beach, in Tavira, Algarve, Portugal
AG Barr Whitewash Day - 3 (of 4) - Sony A77 II with Sony DT 18-70 mm 1:3.5-5.6 Zoom - Photographer Russell McNeil PhD (Physics) lives on Vancouver Island, British Columbia, where he works as a writer.
Turned up at my dacha (I wish) last night after 10pm (local time; 2 hours ahead of BST). We, the driver and me, arrived in style from the airport in a new Mercedes people carrier, but it went decidedly downhill from there. She guided us into a dark car park at the rear of a Stalinist tower block with no clear signs that this was the hostel. I could have been kidnapped for all the world would know, except that the kidnapper, my driver, was exceedingly pert, petite and pretty. But that could have been a clever ruse, raising my confidence and lowering my defences and fully distracting me. And who was that lurking about in the grass behind the building? What was he doing? And where was the main door? Were we supposed to sidle in through the tradesman’s entrance, that metal thing, half battered, covered with graffiti and almost falling off its hinges?
OK, I admit it, the three hour trauma on the plane, being subjected to seemingly endless torture by two terrible two year olds (and their backing groups), had got to me and I was feeling a wee bit paranoid. I actually came off the plane shaking with stress (and half of that was feeling for the poor mother); everyone else was just shaking their heads in disbelief at the horror. It was one of those airplane disasters that somehow get overlooked on the news but, psychologically, the effects are just as devastating in the long run. (I may be exaggerating a tad.)
Anyway, we entered the Soviet building, went past a little old lady in a little old cubby hole, and climbed up some dingy, dirty steps to an even dingier lift. This took ten minutes to come down from the 8th floor and, when it eventually arrived, it was a struggle to get the both of us in it. We chugged up to the hostel, rang the bell and I was shown into the office.
The ‘hostel’ turned out to be a converted apartment and the office was the front room, barely changed since it used to hold the family, complete with spirally carpet, cigarette-burned sofa and glass-fronted cabinet once filled with porcelain now stuffed with junk. This was day one on duty for the girl and she couldn’t find any information for me, she couldn’t even pinpoint the hostel on the map. She knew where my dorm was though, it was the one that wasn’t the office, kitchen, other dorm or bathroom. She could hardly get lost.
The room was decorated in Stalin’s favourite colours – brown, nicotine yellow and off-white – with the obligatory soil-coloured spirally carpet. I was in the top bunk in a room for eight. The bathroom was down the corridor past the office. One bath/shower, one sink (draped with girls’ damp frillies) and a washing machine. The colour was baby pink (that’s the bathroom and the knickers in case you were wondering) and the air was hot and humid. The toilet was next door. Both were to cater for around 20 people. Bliss.
I aimed for an early night (as I wasn’t going to get any gen about Chernobyl (‘Eh, what?’) or cruises on the Dnieper from the receptionist. I fell asleep at midnight but was rudely awoken at 0200 by some fuck texting loudly on his phone. After five minutes of this I decided I’d give a hint of my annoyance by switching on the light, opening up my netbook and playing some music. Eventually he stopped sweating over his text and two minutes later he looked up at me from his lower bunk and said, ‘Vot you do?’
This gave me the chance to study him for the first time. He looked like a cliché of an Eastern Mafia thug: shaved head, furrowed brow, no neck, tattoos down both his bulging biceps and stone cold grey eyes. Yep, here was a cliché of things to see that was not on my tick list. Shit.
I said, ‘What does it look like?’ I hadn’t read Flashman this holiday up to that point but now, in hindsight having finished ‘Flashman at the Charge’, I could see what kindred spirits we were. I couldn’t back away from this because that would have made it even worse, so I brazened it out and stared him down even though I was quaking in my socks. ‘Why, is it bothering you?’, I just about managed to say. ‘Vot you do?’ he repeated, a mite more irritated this time. ‘Can you not see, I am reading.’ ‘Vot you do?’ I gave up and turned back to my netbook. This was getting boring. ‘I don’t know vot the police do in zis country,’ he intoned from below me in a deeply threatening voice, ‘but zey prorbably do not look favourably on a kicking.’
Funnily enough this cheered me up no end, and I even began to relax a wee bit. First, no real thug would ever condescend to threaten a ‘kicking’ when a good ‘knifing’ is far more cost-effective and silent. So he wasn’t so bad then, eh? And second, he admitted to not being Ukrainian and so he was as much an outsider and on foreign turf as me. Not so confident then. Perhaps.
On the other hand he was still far more violent (potentially) than me (eastern European? Too much bigotry?), and much bigger (actually) so it wasn’t all over.
I said, ‘Have you finished texting?’ He said, ‘Vot you do?’ I said, ‘I couldn’t sleep for your texting. Have you finished?’ He said, ‘I give you thirty seconds to switch off and then I come and kick you.’ Oh dear, what to do? Shit shit shit. I decided to bluff him, and said, ‘I will switch off when I am finished.’ He said, ‘You have ten seconds … Five ... One …’ And … he didn’t move. I looked down at him and he looked up at me and I turned back to my netbook and thanked God that he couldn’t see my pulse trampolining and he said … ‘I couldn’t turn the text off. I couldn’t turn the sound down. I tried. How you do it? I tried. I couldn’t turn it off …’ He sounded so pathetic, so lost, not a Russian Mafiosa at all, and then he shuffled out of bed and off to the toilet.
I immediately switched off the light and spent the following hour or so before tripping off into a troubled sleep thinking that the next thing I’d hear would be the hissing of his breath as he loomed over me prior to holding down my sheets and thumping me in the face. At least I’d get to sleep then.
I didn’t see the thug again and the following nights were trouble free (apart from the damned mosquitos Eastern mossies, eh? Bastards. They were as intrusive as the texting).
Train to Crimea, Monday 3rd September, 18.30
Listening to Donovan on my netbook. Gently swaying in the carriage as the train passes a forest of chestnuts and oak with the sun glinting horizontally into the train through the foliage. Sharing my 4 birth cabin with two bottles of red wine, a demi litre of vodka and two women (a blonde and a brunette), and a 17 hour journey through the night ahead of us.
Shame they’re both middle-aged and tea-totallers, and that they’ve both gone to sleep already.
Is it my socks?
The tradition here is that travellers all disrobe and treat the cabin as a hotel room (minus the room service. Or the restaurant. Or telly. Or toilet. Or most other things actually. Good ever-changing view out the window though). So I was turfed out as the two got into their grunties. When I came back in they were both under their duvets. Something tells me that this isn’t going to be a party that I’ll remember for the rest of my life.
Ah well, all the more wine for me!! What’s this vodka like I wonder …
Had a good night’s conversation with an ex-pat on Thursday. I was in the ‘Lucky Pub’ off Khreshchatyk (13 beers proudly advertised, but 11 of them were off. So not so lucky then) and this diminutive Yorkshireman called over to me and asked if I was English after I’d complained to the waitress about the lack of pork scratchings with the beer (no I didn't). We got talking and he told me almost straight off what he was. He was quite up-front about it and totally not ashamed or embarrassed, so good for him. You have to admire such people who believe in themselves and put two fingers up to society; hang the consequences and to hell with Daily Mail readers. Great. I wanted to hear more. I love rebels (so long as they don’t squat in my flat when I’m away. There’s a limit you know.)
So, Peter’s a numerologist. There, I’ve said it. He even gave me his email address to pass on to anyone in my acquaintance who might want to delve into the murky depths of this underworld. You never know, my church is a broad one.
For the next couple of hours, Peter regaled me with his successes – ‘I told her that and she said ‘”You never!!! No way anyone could know that!!”, and I said, “But you need to accept that this is his destiny, it’s written in his birth date, he can’t help it.” And she said, “I never knew. I’ll respect him more now. It’ll be hard, but if he wants to dress as a cow, eat grass and moo around the house …’
Of course, eventually it came around to me. I didn’t want to ask him (he must get it all the time) but he was only too eager to analyse me. He asked me my birthdate, added the first numbers, took away the second, combined the year and subtracted the month and ended up with 4 digits that told him everything about me. He deduced that I was successful, that I like beetroot, am happy, a perfectionist who accepts that most people can’t be as good as me but allowances have to be made for the sake of global harmony, a man who other people follow, a sportsman, someone who has three of the four main elements (water, earth and fire) but lacks air and therefore never has original ideas but am good at following through with other peoples’ plans … ‘
OK, stop there!! I had to put him right about a few things!! Too many to list here but, for one, to say that I ‘like beetroot’!!! That takes the biscuit! How wrong can a person be? And then, to cap it all by thunder , he has the deuced bad manners to suggest that my dear beloved sister (whom he’s analysed too) also lacks ideas!! Well! I can just about accept that I’m a dunderhead, but my sister …. Gad! The dirty swine, damn him to hell and back!
He was a good sort though, by golly . I liked him and he didn’t take my scepticism the wrong way (thank God he wasn’t a Ukrainian zealot!) and we actually managed to veer away from numerology to more concrete and established topics like how shite Liverpool are at the moment, and the state of the nation.
So what about Kyiv? Not overwhelmingly Soviet (one statue I saw of Lenin. Guarded by the military! And a huge statue of Mother Ukraine guarding the Dnipro. Also the Landscape Park – very Soviet with tanks and missiles) and some magnificent boulevards and streets with fantastic microbreweries. Amazing underground shopping precincts (like Toronto) and deep underground network and stations (fall-out shelters?).
Kyiv is the centre of Slavic culture and home to Russian Orthodoxy. Christianity was brought here and the main collection of ancient ecclesiastical structures lies at Lavra – a place full of golden domes and whitewashed churches and bearded men in black dresses. Also there is an interesting museum of a man's lifetime's work - called the microminiature museum and contains his micro-pieces. Sooooooooooo tiny!! Horseshoes on fleas, portrait of Hemingway on a sliced pear seed, and a hollowed out human hair (polished inside and out and so transparent) containing a micro-sculpture of a red rose on a tiny golden stalk. Amazing.
Not all Michigan barns are red. This charming cluster of weathered barns is on a farm between Macon and Tecumseh in Michigan's Lenawee County. I took my photo while passing by on April 9, 2019.
View my collections on flickr here: Collections
Press L for a larger image on black.
Hello Flickr,
This year lot's of things have changed and continue to change.
At the end of May I took the decision to end my engagement with Damian.
Nothing significant changed, and there was no one else, but fundamentally I felt I had changed- and I didn't think it was fair to carry on committing into a relationship that Damian committed so strongly to. We still love each other, I think we always will, but for now we are moving on different paths. For now I am choosing to hold onto the good parts, as this has been one of the most significant relationships I have ever had.
Whitewashed brick building in neo-classical style, dating mainly from the 19 th century.
The castle was owned by numerous barons. The front of the castle was build around 1820.
Over time, the castle has undergone numerous restorations and transformations.
Today is a set of whimsical architecture, which gives it an original and even a little disturbing in foggy weather stamp ...
It is possible that the castle was built on the site of an ancient Roman villa.
Visited this location in December 2014