It’s half a lifetime ago that I first left the UK to live abroad, but barely a day goes by when I’m not in touch with someone there, and I still read the British news when I have time.
Usually, my friends and family keep me up to date when there are stories they think I’ll find interesting, so I was disappointed to realise that no one had told me that the hunt was on in Essex for a lion until it was practically all over.
As I have nothing written and ready for posting, I offer these two splendid beasts from the storytelling bench at St Mary de Crypt in Gloucester and ask you to use your imagination to supply a suitable text:
As part of the Corpus Christi celebrations, the town of Adeje in Tenerife decorates the streets with ‘carpets’ made from salt along the procession route.
I think the carpets are made using salt tinted with powder paint, which is spread over a big outline of the picture taped to the street.
Staying with churches, but moving down from the belfries that have featured in the last couple of posts, I’ve been looking through some old notes and came across this fragment:
In the village church,
a noseless angel
spreads his wings
above a skull.
I don’t seem to have a photo of the noseless angel, but I did manage to find the rather fine demon on the right on one of my many unlabelled CDs.
I think the demon is from one of the Cathar sites in southern France, while the angel was almost certainly in Spain. Now I come to think of it, though, it was probably in la Sierra de Francia, so they may be distant cousins.
don't confuse the narrator 