Defaced Door

Somewhere in the City of Wells there is a narrow-minded little zealot whose greatest satisfaction in life comes from finding historical relics ........

........ and sticking stupid little safety notices on them.

One day we must hope that the common man, imbued with common sense, will rise up and smother these petty tyrants in an avalanche of the multicoloured plastic dross that they are so obsessed with.

A Dirty Dove

A couple of weeks ago I was in St Peter's Church in Winchcombe. It always surprises me how often my outings end up in churches because I have no religion nor am I ever likely to have. However that doesn't mean I can't appreciate the artistic and spiritual stimulus that a church provides and they often offer arresting images for the casual photographer.

I have to admit that St Peter's does not have the most striking interior of the Cotswold wool churches. To be honest, it's rather plain. The only thing that took my eye was an early seventeenth century wooden font-cover crowned by a dove. A very pleasant woman pointed out that I was lucky to have come on that day as the church had just been cleaned.

I think they missed a bit.

Blue Shadows

Food Again

Ludlow in Shropshire has a reputation as a bit of a gourmet destination but we don't go there to eat in the fancy restaurants - it's the small cafes and teashops that are of interest. One we've visited several times is The Olive Branch which specialises in vegetarian food. Today that included Leak & Parsnip Crumble and Cider & Walnut Hotpot, both delicious.

After a spell of serious wandering about, we nipped into De Grey's for tea. I like the atmosphere here and the food and beverages are excellent but like the Betty's chain in Yorkshire, I think it's a bit over-priced. There are plenty of others to choose from.

So there you are, yet another blog involving food. It was going to be about hardware shops but I accidentally deleted the photograph I was going to use - nearly senior citizen succumbs to nascent senility.

A Splash of Red

Peter commented on how eye-catching a small splash of red was in a picture of the Provencal flag I published on October 30th, 2005. The same could be said of this image of Monica striding through the muted colours of a grove of Snow Gums in Australia's Snowy Mountains. A little goes a long way. If she looks worried, she's probably thinking about spiders.

Powering in to 2006

I thought it would be a good wheeze to see the New Year in with some bells and whistles. I've delved into my archives and managed to find the bells but I'm short on whistles. Instead I've substituted a gorgeous Nathan chime horn and accompanied it with some visual stimulation. It's a big file, about 2 Mb, so it may take a while to download and you'll need to turn the sound up on your PC to get the full benefit. There's an unsubtle hint as to the source of my noisy intro to 2006 in the picture below, taken at Banff, Alberta, in June 2004.

Ringing Out The Old, Ringing in the New