Friday, 22 July 2016

Richard III in stained glass...

...and highly detailed pictures


When I was a child I always took a book to bed with me. I didn't always read the words. Sometimes I just looked at the pictures. There was one book in particular, British Wild Flowers, that was a favourite. I still have the book. It has a green hardback cover and colour plates every few pages.

In those days books were mainly black and white. Colour pages were printed on a different paper and, I suspect, expensive to reproduce. I would turn to one of these colour plates and examine it in minute detail. I don't remember ever putting the book down so it must have been a most effective method of lulling myself to sleep.

This was one of the pages that helped me enjoy many a peaceful night:



On a completely different subject but still talking about detailed pictures, Daughter came to visit this week and we went to Leicester Cathedral to see Richard III's tomb - she couldn't come to Leicester without seeing it, now could she!

Two new stained glass windows have appeared since I last visited the Cathedral. They are designed by Thomas Denny and are on the wall beside the tomb. They depict all aspects of Richard III's life, death and subsequent rediscovery. These photographs don't do them justice. Just like my colour photos from my old nature book, these are the kind of windows that, no matter how many times you look at them, you keep seeing new things.

(Thanks to Hilary Melton-Butcher from Positive Letters ... Inspirational Stories for cropped versions of the following photographs. I was having trouble editing them and she came to my rescue.)







Do you have any favourite pictures or photos that can be looked at an infinite number of times and each time new things jump out at you?



Sunday, 10 July 2016

An Ode to a Satnav

It's holiday time and I've been out and about, driving through London and half way across the country. Thanks to my satnav I didn't get lost once so, with tongue firmly in cheek, this is my...

Ode to a Satnav

We used to use maps to find out where we are.
Now we plug in our satnav instead.
We don't find which way's North by locating a star.
I'm afraid that map reading is dead.

But you can't trust a voice from inside a machine
that says, 'make a U turn' all the time,
then it takes a short cut leading into a stream
and you're up to your big ends in slime.

I would say, 'ditch the satnav. Go back to the map.'
But I know that I won't follow suit,
cause my satnav's called Sean. He's a clever young chap
and, between you and me, rather cute.