Tag: seeing

  • Away with the Faeries

    Bore Da as they say in Wales. Good morning Some of us honour our roots, our predecessors and their construction of the Judeo-Christian culture in which we live. It expresses itself in many ways and yesterday I went on one of my favourite memory walks through a copse. This small strip of woodland, almost a…

  • Mark Making

    There was only radio for entertainment for many of my early years. I have written before of how my father taught me to draw. My formative years were spent in physical exploration  of  woods and fields, making model aeroplanes and filling books with drawings. Aged six I spent months living with my grandma and going…

  • Empires End

    “You guys have no idea how painful it is to have been young during the absolute peak era of the greatest empire in human history and now be forced to watch it all unravel. The saddest part is that we are doing it to ourselves. Absolutely agonizing experience. Like watching the most beautiful person you…

  • Morning Prayers

    One of the first things I do in the morning in my every day routine is as I come downstairs, I turn right while the cat sits and waits, posing. He knows what I’m doing, I’m going to turn on the computer and collect the camera from the office. I then return past the bottom…

  • In Slater’s Footsteps

    In Slater’s Footsteps

    Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light.                               Dylan Thomas With the addition of a photographic record of decay, the four books of images of paintings and photographs of the sea defences at the Cuckmere…

  • Mary Watts

    Mary Watts

    Mary who? I tried to find her in my art reference books. Mary Seton Watts, wife of the Victorian establishment painter and sculptor George Frederic Watts (1817 – 1904), and he is definitely in the books.  First British artist to have a gallery devoted just to him, it is claimed. His work, including his portrait…

  • A Garden Studio

    A Garden Studio

    We moved to the seaside when my partner retired as she was born in this area and waited tables in a local caff as a teenager, having happy memories of the coast. Her roots were here, whereas my RAF upbringing wedded my heart and soul to England but not to any one place. So I…

  • Morning

    Morning

    It tickles my cheek, this flicking furry tail. I snake a hand out from under the duvet and rub his head.  Fumbling, I struggle to see the luminous glowing hands on my watch face. 05.55. Early but light is coming under the curtains and cat is doing the ‘I’m starving’ act as if he hasn’t…

  • An English Village

    [et_pb_section admin_label=”section”] [et_pb_row admin_label=”row”] [et_pb_column type=”4_4″][et_pb_text admin_label=”Text”]There are, apparently, 3 churches in Sussex with round flint Saxon towers. I am constantly passing two, the charming little church in the hamlet that is Southease , and, glimpsed as I drive by over the flint walls and behind conical building which I took to be an ancient…

  • Westward Ho!

    The only town in Britain whose name ends in an exclamation mark sits on the North Devon coast. Nearby is the beautiful little town of Bideford, perhaps one of the most beautiful places I have visited in recent years. It was here in the 19th century that the novel Westward Ho! was written by novelist…

  • Sussex Lakes?

    Sussex Lakes?

    As the rain continues, one commentator remarked that “Alfriston is afloat”. Flooding from the Cuckmere is commonplace around the village and its church, the ‘Cathedral of the South Downs’, and only increases as the Environment Agency allows the sea defences at the river mouth to decay, along with the destruction this inaction brings with it.…

  • Childhood in the 1950’s

    Recently my partner and I took a drive into deepest Devon, so deep we stood on a Hartland cliff looking at the Bristol Channel. My mother hailed from Devon, although that was south Devon. She was born in ‘John’s Cottage’ in Churston near Torquay, and one of my uncles was a bell ringer in the…