There are good things happening and bad. There seems to be a deal for allowing the grain to make a peaceful passage by sea from Ukraine, without Russia bombing the shipping. Talks in Turkey have made some progress, signatures next week. Though the Russian hold on their gas so that they can stop its export to Europe is a tad worrying. In this country drought looms on the horizon, so less water use in this hot weather please.
An unwanted visitor has made its way back from London, my daughter has Covid, flu like systems, so she is a bit miserable. Windows are open all over the house, we avoid each other she has her big attic bedroom and the sitting room, I have my own bedroom and kitchen. She came back full of ideas from London, one of them is that we empty two rooms in the house and I move my stuff in storage in. Waiting for a flat across the road has been a long wait and no success yet, so I will think about it.
The Aga is going to be closed down as well (due to very high bills) but still kept. Her love affair with this ungainly creature, heart of the home, means it will go back on in winter. The only change to fuel for it is from gas to electricity, hardly a choice!
1)And so to my choice of photos for today, water predominates of course. I can trace a memory back to each photo, the three roses I laid on Paul's fancy Japanese styled coffin as it stood in the cremation room is captured in the early roses and orange blossom.
2)The second one, the path to the sea and the wonder of an enormous vista of water reaching to the horizon and not quite blending with the sky. Tall wind turbines out to sea. We need to invest in this form of energy and of course the great energy of the sea as the moon washes it back and forward in everlasting motion. The Buck Moon last night is the biggest so far this year.
3) I love packhorse bridges, narrow, only the width of one cart, they still dominate in forgotten lanes and down to small villages. They are incredibly durable and evocative.
4) The beck. Brown stained clear water from the peat. A great tumble of rocks washed down over time, reminding us that once fierce waters, ice glaciers once dominated this land. The sound of the curlew and once the bright call of the cuckoo, who seemed completely out of his way in this wild landscape.
5) Avebury following the small River Kennet, past Silbury Hill up to West Kennet Long barrow. So many memories there. Following the many theories that have been made upon this landscape. Just read one recently about the anthropomorphic nature of the stones. We see faces in everything is the argument.....
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| Things I miss - roses |
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| Long walks, this is in Norfolk down to the beach where Seahenge was found |
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| Always meant to take photos of the pack bridges round North Yorkshire. One needs to meditate on the singular keystone that holds the curve ;) Remove it and what will happen? |
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| Brown becks |
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| Solitary walks around Avebury |
What evocative photos Thelma, especially the first of course. We took the keystone from a brick arch built into the inglenook down in the Dairy (which became mum's flat) and everything came with it, but the mortar was loose. I suppose it depends on the integrity of the mortar how quickly an arch would collapse with the keystone removed.
ReplyDeleteThe Romans built with tufa as a lightweight material, the arch has a history all of its own, exploding into the fan shaped vaults of our cathedrals Jennie. There is one thing I love about this country, we slap 'cannot be removed' on all of our history, and so many roads and lanes are still made for horse and cart.
ReplyDeleteMemories Thelma what would we do without them? On days when sadness creeps in I manage to keep cheerful with them as I am sure you do.
ReplyDeleteYes of course Pat, in actual fact they bring up arguments - see below ;)
DeletePoint 2 - wind turbines - but what gives us our electricity when (frequently) the wind doesn't blow? Not to mention their massive destruction of birds.....
ReplyDeleteJustify 'massive' please. Not so according to this report from Scotland.....https://www.nature.scot/sites/default/files/2017-07/Publication%202015%20-%20SNH%20Commissioned%20Report%20885%20-%20A%20review%20of%20red-throated%20diver%20and%20great%20skua%20avoidance%20rates%20at%20onshore%20wind%20farms%20in%20Scotland.pdf
DeleteSorry about the length of the link. As for when the wind does not blow, well we will all have to sit in the dark shivering, or maybe we will get round to storage of energy, is it batteries that do it?
Trouble with bringing new thinking to the table Will, we always meet the sceptics along the way ;) I gather you do not believe in Climate Change, though obviously it is. Natural or deliberate?
Not sure this tiny url works............... tinyurl.com/2p8kwj4n
DeleteIt's not Climate Change per se that I do not believe in, it is the almost religious fervour that any and every tiny weather incident is a doom-laden portent of man's imminent destruction of the planet that I take issue with.
DeleteThe climate has and will continue to change irrespective of any Net Zero nonsense - over the past two millenia we have ha Roman and Medieval warm periods (with farming on Greenland during the latter), and other periods much colder like the Little Ice Age. In the more recent past. All of these with basically very similar atmospheric CO2 levels.
I am a sceptic, but am sceptical of the wildly inaccurate outcomes of the climate modellers when put up against the reality of real temperature measurements.
Yesterday whilst looking at bird death via wind turbines, (10,000 to 100,000 a year) I came upon the fact that 55 million birds are killed by cats every year. Did they count them said my sceptical mind, knowing full well that they had taken a particular number of cats and then multiplied their answer to arrive at an approximate figure. I have no problem with a sceptical idea of whether the scientists are telling us the truth. But the fact that we are experiencing different, destructive weather is obvious. Co2 levels are not helping, I doubt very much electric cars will do either. By the way don't make me research weather predictions, all I would say is that things are happening out there, and the panic you see in our scientists maybe over emphasised but how do you get the world to change its ways?
DeleteI think that "we" lost our way some time ago, we should have followed the French and invested much more in nuclear power, sidestepping CO2 and other pollutant issues (acid rain from the sulphur content of coal and oil etc). I can also recall some scientists arguing that oil and natural gas are far too valuable as chemical raw materials to just burn them. I would support many of the classic Green Party ideas of making our human footprint much lighter on the world, before they were overtaken by single-issue zealots. However, the one major factor in that that is always sidestepped is the explosion in sheer numbers of us - nearly eight billion and rising. I don't see how the Earth can cope with those kinds of numbers and still allow most to have a reasonable standard of living.
DeleteA bleak reply. Agree that the projected number of people on this earth will probably consume all its resources. Nuclear power is a bit like dicing with death, though Chernobyl may not have recovered for the human population but nature has flourished there. I shall listen to the last hustings of the North-East tonight, I think the Green Party has grown up mostly, though rather dull as they take on the trappings of a political party.
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