This weekend has been far too hot and far too busy, which is my excuse for not posting on the blog yesterday and almost failing to post today.
I’ve spent far too long on my feet in the sunshine and am exhausted. But I resisted the temptation to jump in the river and cool off, however green and cool and tempting it looked.
Continue reading “parked”
The day’s nearly over, but I still have time to publish a post commemorating the anniversary of the birth of the Pre-Raphaelite artist Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones. The main image above is a detail from a stained glass window he designed for St. Philip’s Cathedral, Birmingham.
I knew I had a photo of one of the Burne-Jones windows, but had forgotten that it was entitled The Last Judgement. Now its subject matter has reminded me of the sky I photographed one evening recently, which was a beautiful, if somewhat disturbing, brimstone yellow.
Continue reading “day’s end”
Although I am in Spain, I will not be attending the controversial running of the bulls in Pamplona. Instead, to mark the San Fermín festival, which started yesterday, I offer this splendid statue from Birmingham’s Bullring shopping centre. 
Looking through the paints at the art shop the other day, I had to check the names closely as the plastic bottles made it hard to tell precisely which colour paint they might hold.
I found a ‘burnt sienna’, but the closest to ‘crimson lake’ was ‘berry wine’, and there was no ‘Prussian blue’ or ‘ochre’. I definitely think my childhood was the richer for having the old names – I don’t think I’d have liked to paint with ‘glazed carrot’ or ‘pumpkin’.
I was a bit taken aback, though, to find both the bottles in the photo labelled as “plaid”.
Having decided that they were actually black and white, I consulted the Scottish Register of Tartans, but still haven’t worked out which clan they might belong to.
Against a spring-blue sky
the twitch and loop of flickering wings
says: pipistrelle!
Of course it’s saying it in Spanish, and I see from the IberiaNature glossary that there are some two dozen species of murciélago in Spain, so I may be mis-hearing what’s being said.
Continue reading “(not) a batting title”
don't confuse the narrator 