a little musing

The Independent had a headline on Friday declaring that Moslems in Britain feel alienated. They feel that they are ignored and unwanted. Whilst I did not read the article I can appreciate their problem. It is because of the First Law of the English - everybody is under suspicion until they have been living in the village for at least ten generations, and then one might deign to say hello. Is there anywhere else in the world where there is a word for the outsider who has come to live in a county from outside. There is in Devon and Cornwall. It is I believe the word Grockel. The Moslem leader who made the accusation has clearly not lived in the country very long and the insular attitude of the average Briton is a very deep-rooted one. It is not so long ago that no-one moved from a village unless circumstances enforced it. It is the reason why we are so poor at speaking foreign languages - our tongue is the best and it is the only one that is valid. And by that I don't mean our English language, but our local version of it. The Geordie, the Scouser, the Brummie, the Devonian, the Cockney, the Essex lot - each will say to all the others, "You talk funny". If this be the case among people of our own particular race, it is not surprising if those of a foreign extraction feel the sense of opposition. It is not that anybody else is abhorrent (except to the BNP), but rather that as an individual the average Brit feels him/herself perfect in comparison. There have been Moslems living here quietly for several generations, but the great and varied influx of immigrants from all corners of the globe hide them and make people tar everyone with the same brush. That some elements seem to be on a terrorist campaign does not mean all are, any more than disaffected knife-wielding teenagers form the majority of that age-group. However our inbuilt prejudices can provoke or exacerbate a situation which would not otherwise have arisen. Above all everyone who declares he or she is a Christian should be totally innocent of any such attitudes - yet in history regrettably it has often been the Church that has been at the forefront of promoting such attitudes. We have much to repent of.

Justin Case, that enigmatic fellow

Just in case you have been missing a new entry... I was walking down our street when I came upon this work of art. a man was loading up the lorry with branches from a cherry tree. All were cut to the same length of six feet, and laid in orderly tiers in the forward half of the lorry, up to a a height of some eight feet. It looked so neat and impressive, that I said it was a pity it was all going to dumped in the recycling centre (the Dechetterie as Giulietta and I always like to call that place from its French equivalent). It should have been preserved and entered for the next Turner Prize. Was there any significance that the man working on it was an East European? Certainly I have never seen anything like it before. (I am sorry about the over-exposre of the r.h. corner - I haven't mastered the art of eliminating it yet.)
Another time I passed the Blairs old church which has a lovely artistic feature which I will show sometime. Meanwhile the tower by the side of the main body of the building just looks like an enormous sharpened pencil, and was positively crying out to be viewed in a slightly different perspective(no offence intended to Dunadan and his friends). I was actually lining the tower up with the viewfinder gridlines.
On a second visit to a new hairdressers I sat by an open window and spotted that below passed the Overground Railway, so out came the camera and waited a short while. As they say, have camera, will snap. Looming over the local swimming pool at our local park is what looks like a giant effigy of Gandalf, or could it be Treebeard - or his cousin perhaps?

Eagle eyes

Have any of you wonderful readers been as clever as Giulietta who observed a particular feature of the train photograph? It is that the three flowers on the left hand side represent the colours of the photograph, but in reverse order (though you do have to stretch your imagination a little to fit brown into the train engine and carriages). Thus do art critics earn their keep, but we get it for free!

re H F D!

What can a proud father say when his two daughters come up with such beautfully phrased blogs - see Going Gwada and evie's blog - other than to show the additional card which Evie sent, not from Hawaii,but through a kind friend who remembered to post it in good time, though I did not open it till today. Inside it Evie says that she made it with me in mind, I presume in memory of the times I came south to St Pancras in the days of steam. Ah, them wurr the days!! Many thanks to the pair of you - and the occasion made me think of our wonderful Father in heaven who gave his only Son so that we might not perish but have everlasting life (John 3: 16).

further to buses and things

The g.l. has a blog of her own under Giulietta - now isn't that sweeter and classier than 'the g.l.'! After reading the blog below 'of buses and things' she said she had expected to see a picture of the Manchester Ship Canal. So this seeks to fill in that gap (and to get you to read that blog if you have not already done so).
So courtesey of penninewaterways.co.uk we see first a pleasant view...
then some modern buildings, apartments I would think. I really wanted to get pictures of the old houses showing a ship passing by the back garden, but none seem to be available - maybe none did! - but I thought these cows grazing by John Reynolds (pbase.com) might feel the experience, especially if Geri the Inquisitive Cow is among them. (I wonder where he is these days, and if he thinks back fondly of those mind-boggling chats with dunadan.)
Rather more dramatic is this view of the 'Arklow Rock' sailing - go to the top of the class anyone who can work out whether it is going E - W or W - E - up/down the Canal. (shipsofthemersey.co.uk, the work of someone called Alan.) Finally a lovely view of the Detroit swing bridge at Salford. (manchesteronline.co.uk, from Aidan O'Rourke.)

Of buses and things

Our kitchen window looks out on a roundabout at a four-road junction. We see cyclists and pedestrians, lots of cars and from time the blaring police cars or vans, as in the picture.
We are on a one-bus route - the 236, as seen in the next picture - an important link for Finsbury Park Station with its tube and mainline connections and buses to further north. But major roadworks have affected certain routes, and we now find ourselves on a 4-bus route, a diversion route for 3 bus routes, like the single-decker number 393. Blogger would not give me space for its picture, but it travels up the road past our window like this 236, at this point going in the exact opposite direction to its normal route, which it will pick a quarter of a mile away!
Here is the number 19, heading like the 236 for Finsbury Park which makes for a pleasant alternative to the 236, when waiting at our usual bus stop.
This number 4 passes near Finsbury Park on it way north to Archway where the Goinggwadw family reside which is also extremely convenient, though regretfully they will have gone to Gwada before these diversions have ended.
The sight of these double-decker buses passing the kitchen window - I still haven't got used to them - makes me thing how surprising it must have been for people living in houses near to the Manchester Ship Canal suddenly seeing these great ocean-going ships pass by after it was built.
(But not as surprising as it would have been if they had passed before it was built.)

saffron hill revisited

Looking up Charterhouse Street from Saffron Hill
Within Saffron Hill looking back at the entry steps on Charterhouse street.

Today Dunadan and Arathorn met in a cafe in Oxford Street and chatted about this and that over cups of tea and teacakes. Dunadan had been to Ely Place - see his entry - which is a side road off Charterhouse Steet, which itself leads off Holborn Circus. This is the 5-road junction just before the Holborn Viaduct. Showing off his new-found knowledge, Arathorn said that just down the road from Ely Place there is a side street (pedestrianised and stepped entry point) called Saffron Hill. It was the street where Fagin, of 'Oliver Twist' fame, had his 'den'. It was, Arathorn solemnly declared, in O. T.'s day (1837)) an area off much ill-repute, being the home of drunks vagabonds and thieves, indeed the worst of society. It then struck us that , being a stone's throw away from the City financial institutions, the area hadn't changed much, for all that they are clean modern-looking buildings...