wild gladioli

On a sunlit morning here I picked a bunch of these wild gladioli and took them home and put them in a blue glass vase. In the market in Marrakech I used to buy bunches of these lovely cerise flowers. As I write these words I remember the colours and perfumes of the flowers there... will I ever get back to Marrakech I wonder...?

spring is sprung

On the first day of April 2011 we have a summer's day,

followed by "An Ancient Mariner" day,

then a gloomy Sunday where that is washed away by rain,

but the grass grows overnight and wild flowers spring up along the roadsides.....

Escape

Curious to think that this time last week I was in Venice...

It was an icy cold day, a cutting wind blowing in off the lagoon, but it was still magic. Was I really there? Only I know for sure, there is no evidence, except this shadow image... but that could be anyone.....


Travelling alone makes you see and experience things in different ways...





"Don't Look Now!"


"Death in Venice."

January 22nd 2011

It's cold and frosty here, and the waning moon is still bright enough to illuminate the night, up the hill in La Guardia the fireworks are going off as I write.
This time last week I was at a San Anton Party, and walking back home at 2.00am the world was bathed in a silver blue light, no need for torches while coming back down through the olive trees. I tried to imagine what it would be like to be flying over the land looking down on the moonlit countryside.

By the bonfire, my friend Ruth, and the "guy" still standing high and then me and the guy's succumbed to the fire. Asked what the word for hoguera was in English, told them and this led to speculation as to what the "bon" meant, turns out nothing to do with French, but derives from from 15th century word banefore or bonefire, a fire for burning bones on.... hmmmm...

The cold and the thick white frost this morning make me think of Christmas in the UK... it seems the only photos I took there were of frozen ponds...

Reappearance

November 2010

Seems I disappeared.... I blinked and almost 6 months have passed, I must have done something with all that time.....

At the end of July I went to Jiko An, in the Alpujarra for a course of chi gong and shiatsu. I came back filled with peace and tranquillity . It was so quiet up there and felt a bit like being on another planet. The nearest village, Yegen, was a few kilometres down the hill. Beyond those distant mountains is the Mediterranean.

A week or so later I was in London. In the National Portrait Gallery bookshop I picked up a book about Gerard Brennan , who lived in Yegen back in the 1920s, and wrote "South of Granada" based on his life there. I found myself reading a paragraph where he described the feeling of being high up there looking down on all that space from Yegen, in Jiko An we were even higher up . Most of the time the sky was cloudless and the nights moonlit but one morning a ribbon of cloud drifted up the valley, and gradually spead until it we were on an island surrounded by

cloud, which buffetted up against windows and cut us off from the rest of the world. The next
day all was clear and cloudless again.

Well, about those photos, as we flew over Poland the sun was lighting up myriad lakes of all sizes and shapes, rivers, streams, ponds, and as I watched them I had the impression that they were filled with molten metal, silver or mercury perhaps, and were only prevented from overflowing by the viscosity of the surface tension, it was magical and I could have watched for ages. I later found out that this area has more lakes than almost anywhere else apart from Finland and is called "Kashubia". It is very green and apart from the water also has lots of woods and forests.We are making our descent here and moving out of Kashubia but there are still lots of lakes . I'm often surprised at the photos I can get with my humble little digi cam, and remember many ariel views and configurations of the land which have attracted me, green and yellow patchworked countryside in England, dry reddish brown expanses of Spain punctuated by occasional lakes of silvery green in dragon like forms , and on returning from this trip the surprise of seeing the mountains north of Málaga a verdant green, as if someone had thrown an enormous emerald velvet cover over everything and tweaked them to form perfect blanket folds. The longest wettest winter in Spain for many years has had its benefits.

Back from Poland

First sight of the Baltic, from Sopot, the sea deep blue green, and the sand silver. I strode out along the beach, and reached the pier , where I did my first transaction in Poland, ordered myself a hot chocolate and apple cake with ice cream! Delicious!
No, this isn't Poland but Essex, hard to believe only a mile or so from Stanstead Airport and this the hotel I stayed in overnight. It was little quirky and I liked it. It also had an Indian Restaurant where I had dinner, the only other guests were Spanish, from Madrid.
I just had to go for walk to soak up the green of the English countryside and this is me on English soil with cowslips.
Coming in over Poland I took these photos from the plane. Watch this space, I'll tell you more about them later.