Madrid – don't confuse the narrator

wool gathering

When I lived in Madrid, I had a friend who collected building façades.

These weren’t just the well known landmarks like the bright red bricks and decorative paintings of the Plaza Mayor, the imposing white, wedding-cake like tiers of the Palacio de Comunicaciones or the complex scrollwork of the Palacio Longoria (which was ruined, anyway, in those days, by ugly air-conditioning units.) No. These were the kind of façade you can find on any street – if you’re paying attention.
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cages

The human race is very fond of enclosures and barriers. We put fences around open spaces and lock other people out.

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for the birds

Although the afternoon was dull and drear, this morning there was bright sunshine and it felt like spring. So, camera in hand, I went for a walk in the park.

There weren’t many spring flowers, or buds on the trees, but there were lots of dogs and their owners, dozens of gulls on the football pitch, three or four fishermen by the river, and several families feeding the ducks.
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seasons in the sun

Given the fairly dreadful weather over the last couple of months, I’ve been trying to track down a half-remembered quotation to the effect that the worst winter ever was one summer in England.

In fact, I’ve found that the actual wording is, “The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco.” – a quotation often misattributed to Mark Twain – which doesn’t really fit the bill.
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on a theme

Although all the images in this post have something in common, I’m not sure that they are, strictly speaking, variations on a theme. That, I think, would imply that the theme had been chosen and the photos taken to illustrate it.

What really happened was that I was looking through the mass of photos I have taken recently trying to find connections: it was a post hoc selection, not premeditated.
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