Angels in the living space

Richard Zola r.i.p.

Richard Zola: Requiem

in peace, albeit prematurely. Rest
as long as resting takes you to your peace,
or sift beneath the awnings and the eaves
of dusk, where microscopic movements step
to night and where the piper at the gates
of evening paints the footsteps for each leaver
of the dance. Show him the details, please,
and wish each dancer through the door, the best.

Goodbye and thanks for all the unworn shoes
and everything you courteously gave
to us. The whole thing's yours now, so you're free
to step down anywhere and as you do,
to get a sense of all that great perspective
which we need, but are too small to see.

Don't take your eye off the ball...

Inside again

A contemporary interior - complete with a lovingly restored Charles de Gaulle table.

Rouen

The major city of Northern France in the middle ages, a lot of Rouen has been preserved. The spire in the background replaced the one destroyed in WWII.

There may be no better way to see it than on a sketching holiday. At least, that's what I thought after seeing these three Japanese efforts.

The cultural excuse

In this gripping scene from the Bayeux Tapestry, possibly composed by a forebear of Steven Spielberg, William of Normandy removes his helmet in the heat of battle in order to demonstrate to his troops that rumours of his death were, indeed, exaggerated.

More prosaic and contemporary...

How's this for a little washroom interior. (Using up spare tiles).

The tower's no slouch

Here's the spire, taken from one of the arrow slots of the nearby fort. (All made for William the Conqueror , or at least his wife, Mathilda). The entrance is there at the bottom of the pic.















And here's a scruffy little detail from the towers at the other end of the church:

The front

The same wall seen from the outside. Touch of the flamboyant gothic in the arch there, what?

Cathédrale St. Pierre, Caen

We've been running critically short on architectural interiors here.
This is, as the title here suggests, the Cathédrale St-Pierre at Caen. Mind you, the gothic monuments are so thick on the ground in Normandy that they call it a church rather than a cathedral. They don't consider it worthy of more than passing mention

in the official city website , either.

Tomorrow, the view from the front.

Old man river 12.10.2005

noen sjøskole (og kake) bilder

Klikk på bilde(ne) så får du større. Eller klikk her og få en collage.

Klikk her for noen knuter (knots).

volailles voulant voler

runs on through the autumnal city

The tantalising elfen sonnet form
must be the work of higher minds,
for though the quatrains’ four-square lines
are quite familiar, the sound

is foreign; eerie as a freighter’s horn
to mist-bound senses, it reminds
us of the Sirens we so yearn to find
we’ll take on oceans for their song

then break across their shores and dissipate.
The absent fourth quatrain denies
us knowledge of that altered state:
we could not stand to be so wise.

..when the angel woos the clay he'll lose his wings at the dawn of the day.

That title's from Raglan Road, by P Kavanagh.

Rural Trainspotting

Markers

An innovative move by environmentally friendly surveyors has seen the use of seagulls to indicate strategic points on proposed building plots such as the one pictured above.

Reaction from the building trade in general has been lukewarm.

Flight of the . . .